001good evening everyone my name is vicki smith i'm president of the city school district of albany's board of education on behalf of the board i welcome you to our meeting i'm joined in person tonight by real managing this man secretary dr tour de sir vice president savage is crazy and and virtually ms wilson joins us good evening this meeting is being live streamed me just i apologize just also say good evening to our superintendent we miss here our board clerk ms timmins baker and cabinet thank you all this evening so this meeting is being live streamed and the instructions to view the meeting are available at albanyschools.org boe if you need to share those with anyone else we will share or show the relevant slides and documents on the virtual meeting screen as well as
002the screens here in this room you may also access them via albanyschools.org boe if you prefer to be in control of the slides yourself you will also notice that the guidance for school districts has changed regarding covid precautions masks are no longer required and those who choose to mask are encouraged to do so you're here in person and plan to speak in public comment please make sure you have signed in at the table with ms timmins our board clerk and with that introduction i invite you uh those of you who choose to join us as we stand for the pledge of allegiance pledge flags thank you in addition to the pledge of allegiance we always focus our meeting by stating the mission of the city school district of albany which is to work in partnership
003with our diverse community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success and ms adams i'm ready to turn over to you do you have a report for us this evening absolutely thank you so very much i appreciate the opportunity to share my superintendent's report i was thrilled to dress in falcon blue last friday and attend the albany high school summer graduation at stephen and harriet miller i'm sorry steven and harriet meyers middle school 12 students earned diplomas and the new graduates joined nearly 600 others who received diplomas in june you can see photos of the celebration on our facebook page at albanyschools.org albany high's long time motto is a single word assiduity asciduity means perseverance and diligence and i can't think of a better
004word to describe all our recent graduates they successfully finished high school despite the challenges that they and we faced in a world that was forever changed by covet 19. i am so proud of each and every member of the class of 2022 please join me in giving them a round of applause we are looking forward to kicking off the 2022-23 school year next tuesday morning at our annual convocation this year's convocation will consist of a video message that includes president vicki smith and myself discussing how our continued focus on equity will manifest itself this school year through academic and social and emotional supports for students i will expand on these themes during my later update in this meeting as well the convocation message will also include student voice from across all grade levels after the
005convocation message ends individual schools will hold professional development to continue preparing their buildings for the return of our students i would like to remind our families that we will begin the new school year with orientation days for students next thursday and friday you can visit your school's page in order at albanyschools.org to find out which of these days your student will attend all students will return for a full day of instruction tuesday september 6th with school starting next week i would like to once again urge families to make sure to have students immunized in order to attend school please make sure that you keep track of which immunizations that your child may need students who do not have all immunizations that the state requires will not be able to attend school after the first two
006weeks for more information about which immunizations students need at each grade level please visit albanyschools.org immunizations yesterday representatives from hill and marx at new york state industries for the disabled delivered 70 brand new backpacks loaded with new school supplies that will go to the students at albany international center and albany school of humanities hill and marx purchased the backpacks and supplies and nysid workers partnered with the company to fill them you can see photos of this donation on our facebook page at albanyschools.org we are very very fortunate and grateful for the support we receive from our community partners i want to remind you that we will be celebrating them at the community partner reception at albany school of humanities on thursday september 8th beginning at 5 30 p.m please save that date on your calendars
007we hope that you will be able to join us one of the subject one on i'm sorry on the subject of community partners this week marks the final week of our summer food back to school i'm sorry summer school summer food backpack program let's say that three times fast why don't we um i would like to thank the albany fund for education for its efforts to provide volunteer support for this program afe was instrumental in establishing this initiative two years ago and we are fortunate to have their support again this year i would also like to recognize the members of our maintenance and operations department who traveled to latham to pick up thousands of pounds of food every other week at the regional food bank of northeastern new york and community engagement coordinator kathy edmondson
008for organizing the summer program for the district this is no small undertaking and the results are so important for our students and families my thanks again to all involved for making this happen each week throughout the summer albany high school student athletes kicked off their pre-season practice for all sports this week and you can see photos on our facebook page the final season the fall season officially begins with home volleyball with a home volleyball game versus averill park on september 1. you can visit our athletics section at albanyschools.org for the complete competition schedules for all of our teams our school athletes in grades 7 and 8 along with boys modified 9 soccer are getting ready for the start of the season fall tryouts and practices begin friday august 29th we have practice times and locations
009available for our modified teams in our athletics section of our website under fall season information we also have a meet the coaches night for fall sports planned for august 29th beginning at 6 pm and please don't forget that we will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new north albany middle school from 5 30 to 7 pm tomorrow night this event will give our students families and community members an opportunity to see the transformation of the building into a larger modern facility on par with hackett and myers middle school i will caution that north albany is still very much a construction site for the next few weeks and so we will definitely make sure that everyone is safe while they are walking through the building the north albany project will support our transition to the
010new feeder enrollment pattern that will begin phasing that we will begin phasing in this school year providing equity and an equitable middle school opportunities for all of our students we hope that you will join us to check out this marvelous opportunity at our school i will conclude my report tonight by taking a few minutes for a special recognition as you know we had our board elections and we have new officers but i'd like to acknowledge ann savage who is our current vice president and in recognition and appreciation of ann savage for your tireless dedication to the students and families of the city school district of albany as the board of education president from 2018 to 2022 and of course your continued service as board vice president we are grateful for your leadership and your commitment
011and thank you for being all in for albany madam president that concludes the superintendent's report and i'll move right into the district update our district update tonight we have a different look we have a new template that we are using as we roll out for the new school year so you'll see a different template as we move forward looking at our vision and because it is the beginning of our school year i'll go ahead and i will read through these slides our vision the city school district of albany will be a district of excellence with caring relationships and engaging learning experiences that provide equitable opportunities for all students to reach their potential our mission statement we will work in partnership with our diverse community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to
012provide the knowledge and the skills necessary for success we have five goals and our goals include increased student achievement enhance the delivery of quality instruction build our leadership capacity empower our families and partner with our diverse community i'd like to say that as we we are going to move to the discussion topics but i'd like to say that one of the things about our vision mission and goals that i think is really important is we've been able to be consistent over time we have not shifted year after year with different goals with a different vision with different uh with a different mission statement which has allowed us to focus and demonstrate much of the success that you see happening within our district and you'll see that in our data and our program reports tonight through
013our update we will have the covet update and then we'll talk about our back to school updates we'll look at the first days of school we'll talk about our covet updated guidance our transportation and mr miles is here to cover that particular section and we'll talk about staffing and hiring updates and i know that mr patron is on the line and he'll be able to answer any questions that you may have so as we start with our covet 19 status update to date um from august 1st to the 24th we've had 16 cases in july we had a total of 23 cases we are continuing to communicate with our employees and our families about in our community weekly about covet 19 and the cases during the summer couple of things that i want to add
014right here before we move forward is we have new guidance that has come out from the state department and all of our entities are on the same page and in the past what we've had to do is once the guidance has come out from cdc we've had to work with our local doh with both these with the state department in order to see what other guidance would be provided in the document that has been provided to us which we will share publicly after this presentation there will be no additional guidance for clarification from this document because all of the entities were able to work together in order to produce the document so it is very clear with where we are headed mass will continue to be optional we are still encouraging vaccinations we also know
015that we do not have to social distance unless you know people feel more comfortable with that and we're able to accommodate then we can do that um we are also encouraging the booster shots um as well as one of the things that we are adding to our website is if someone tests positive there is an antiviral medication that can be prescribed by the physician and so we are providing those outlets either be via the doh via our county health department we can look at people can contact their physician directly and to see if they can get the prescription for that antiviral medication as more information comes out with that we will be providing that to our family so that they can have access to that opportunity the other thing that we are looking to continue
016we are continuing with our hand hygiene encouraging students to wash their hands as well as the adults we will continue to have sanitizer available and so we want to make sure that people are aware of that as well as our cleaning protocols will remain in place because we consider those best practices so much of what we are looking at there will be no quarantining or isolation of those people who are considered contacts or exposures if someone tests positive the recommendation and what we are following this guideline is that you isolate for five days and then after those five days wearing a mask for five days and so we are looking to follow those particular guidelines as we go to our back to school updates for the first days of school please make sure that you
017look at albanyschools.org start for more detailed information on thursday september 1 only the students in the following categories that are listed on the screen will attend at the elementary level grades three through five including self-contained and special ed in those grades middle school grade six and partial grade seven and eight including self-contained special education in those grades um i need to highlight that where it says partial grades seven and eight you really need to contact your school because it's based on the teams that are assigned to go on that day so please make sure that um as parents you are looking at your particular school as to if your student is seventh grade or eighth grade if they are going to school on that day and then the high school grades 9 and then grades
01812 including self-contained special education in those grades for friday september 2nd we are looking at elementary pre-kindergarten through second grade middle school partial seventh and eighth grade including self-contained special education in those cohorts and all students in grade seven eight scheduled to attend september one will not attend school on september 2nd at the high school grades 10 and 11 including self-contained for sp and special education in those grades monday september 5th is labor day and so all schools and offices district offices will be closed and then the first day where all of our students are in session district wide will be tuesday september 6. so the center for disease control and prevention they provided updated guidance we provided the link available um so that parents can see that link and know that these are the
019guidelines that we are following much of this i just covered when you look at masks they'll still be optional in our buildings the positive tests they are required to isolate at home for five days and then wear a well-fitting mask for five days after returning to school or work contacts and exposure there's no more isolation for that and symptoms if you are exhibiting symptoms we do ask that you please stay home and then you should stay home until you are fever-free for 24 hours without medication and symptoms are improving and so the cdc does recommend testing as soon as possible after the symptoms begin we have two more opportunities before school starts for parents to have their students tested at harriet gibbons i'm sorry picking up tests i'm sorry we're not offering testing we're picking
020up tests uh tuesday october august 30th from nine a.m to three and wednesday august 31st from 9 a.m to 3. it is not required to have a negative test in order to return to school however we have received our last or shall i say beginning of the year shipment of test kits and we are distributing those to our families we are encouraging our families to please test before school for your own peace of mind so that you know exactly where your child stands and then what are the steps that you would need to take should they test positive if we do not have if we still have quite a few tests left once school begins we will distribute those tests at the beginning of school so that students can go home with the test kits
021and they can have them on hand as needed information about vaccines we've provided this before please continue to look at where you can get your vaccinations our daily reporting to for at the school level for department of health is no longer required at this time i'll turn it over to mr miles for our transportation update touch on a couple quick topics is our mass mandate for our yellow and cdca buses um our yellow bus for student mass r option we're going to encourage them but they are not required i'm on c68 however they are required and they are not an option um a new procedure that we're going to be going through this year and it's going to be our sweep repository um last year i noticed that a lot of our buses were running
022late circling back from the pickup students and we were accommodating those one or two students that may have missed the stop but it was causing the entire route to be late that's something that we want to address and make sure that we don't carry on so what we've proposed is no longer going back and mid-route so once the bus leaves their depot they're just going to finish the route go right to the school if a parent calls in that they miss the bus we are going to assign an uptown driver as well as a downtown driver to kind of go back sweep up those students at the end of each tier um in the afternoon we have a lot of um it's a lot of calls from schools the student may be out there a
023lot for too long maybe horseplaying with a friend wherever they think they run to the bathroom and they miss the bus leaving to bring them home um before the call we would send the bus back and again it would accommodate those one or two students that missed it but the vacuum the route mom that is calling said just curious where the shooting is opposed to that this year for to have the scene sit tight at the school we're expecting a wait time about a half hour or so but once we have a driver cleared we're going to swing right back to the school pick up that suit and get them home um in regards to our cta slipper schedules unfortunately i don't have that information right at this moment we are expecting that tomorrow morning
024i have been having conversation with cnca we did have to push back their first proposed routes but we are expecting the adjustments that we suggested and uh so you should have that information by tomorrow thank you so very much mr moss at the end of this presentation we will open it up for questions i know some board members may have questions about transportation staffing and hiring updates this is a very hot topic not just for us but throughout the capital region and really throughout the country as we look at teaching shortages and staffing shortages within districts so positions posted here today we've had officially we've hired 95 and we have 106 positions that have just closed we have 39 absta that would be our um teaching physicians or non-classroom professionals and you can see the
025breakdown that with regard to non-classroom professionals 10 of those physicians nurses social workers etc and 29 of those positions are classroom teachers in core and on-floor areas the largest area where we are seeing those vacancies is in our absolute positions and that is our support staff and then we have one nc position that we are looking to fill interviews scheduled and in process 16 and reference check checks and final stages of onboarding 31. so we are chipping away at the number um and we are continuing to be vigilant with regard to that one of the things that i will say is that we may start some classrooms with substitutes in those classrooms and so our instructional supervisors are working feverishly to prepare lessons so that we have that covered should we have substitutes in those
026classes at this time this concludes the update with regard to the district update and we will open the floor for questions very good thank you um and board is our usual practice we'll prioritize questions and have you ask your most important ones first we'll start with one question for each board member so that all members have the opportunity to be heard uh if you have any questions or comments or if there's time remaining we'll go around again let me start here to my left who's crazy hi i just had a question on the kobe policy and it was that i noticed that our current attendance policy requires a doctor's note for absences of five or more days are we accepting a positive covet test as a substitute for doctors know uh given that students with
027a positive test need to isolate for these five days and yes that is our normal procedure okay savage did you have a question i did but it wasn't uncovered do you want to switch to a new topic now or do you want to do all code anyone have anything else on the covered topic no so oh i just really want was more of a comment than a question i just wanted to thank you for the creative solution around about non-busing and both super in the morning super in the afternoon that seems like a wonderful creative solution to get our kids where they need to go without inconveniencing the others so i really appreciate the creative idea thank you please i wanted to echo vice president savage's comments um just it's been a while since i
028last saw you i love your shirt i want to know where i can get one and second of all you've done a great job and i can tell like you've got a little bit of white hairs from the last time i saw you i was like this job must be getting to you a little bit but thank you for doing it you're doing a great job keep at it and i look forward to hearing about uh what cdta has to offer us thank you all right board colleagues any further questions uh ms wilson i want to make sure i don't miss you there well i do have a question about uh the nature of the first day of school are we universally doing 8 a.m because i do know we were looking into high schoolers
029having like a late start on during the school year and i realized these first two days are more orientation for incoming students but i was just curious about that i can speak as an albany high parent that the communication from the principal was very clear school day starts at 8 30 at albany high the individual schools because we have some early starts and late starts the individual schools are responsible for sending that information out and i just have one more tip as a parent which is if you are a middle school parent you your student schedule comes home in the mail and it says right on there which team your student is on if they do not know their new team which they might not because they moved up a year it's printed on the
030schedule and it is findable information so that's one way you can also of course always call your school and they'll be able to tell you but it is printed on the schedule very good for colleagues any other questions for the superintendent seeing none superintendent i thank you thank you very much mr miles thank you as well thank you and we'll go right into our district priorities and thank you for the adoption of them at our last board meeting and so we are rolling them out uh right now and they will also be covered pretty much in detail at convocation but we wanted a chance to just share it out before convocation um as stated earlier our vision mission and goals are the same and we are very excited to have that continuity because it helps
031us keep that north star so that we're all headed in the right direction with clarity we have our educational design which we started a few years ago roughly around 2018 i believe it was 2018 when we first shared this out and we have been working in alignment with this educational design what's important to note that we will keep bringing back every year is that at the center of what we do is instruction and it is that instructional framework that sets the stage and the tone for what our students will experience in the classrooms and throughout their buildings what wraps around that is the social and emotional well-being of our students we know that if we are not addressing those social and emotional needs of our students and the mental health concerns that um we can't
032even get to the instructional framework which is why we've dedicated so many resources and we're engaging in ruler which is the emotional intelligence component from yale university the pillars that you see at the bottom the reason those arrows are pointing up is because that represents each division in the district and so everyone in our district falls somewhere within those respective divisions those divisions work to support the instructional framework every single person in this district employed by this district contributes to the instructional framework and the success of our children understanding how that role makes a difference whether it be custodial or clerical safety security instructional assistant teaching assistant teacher itself or an an administrator every single role in this district supports the instructional framework and the success of our children and understanding where we fit and
033how that works is the job that we do in our various divisions to ensure that people see that connection as to how they are moving this district forward because i'm going to take a moment and just bring it back to the forefront as we have experienced an 82 graduation rate this past uh for the class of 2021. thank you very much we are so very proud of that we have come from a 65 graduation rate all the way to an 82 graduation rate we have looked at closing and narrowing that gap between our students of color and our non-students of color and we are not only closing the gap but each of those identity groups are moving forward and progressing so we're not just staying level with our highest performing group they are achieving as
034well and then our our students of color are achieving and closing that gap at rapid rates and we're so very proud of that and that is because of the dedicated work of all of our employees in the district focused on the success of our children which leads us to our district priorities and we have not changed our priorities because it is the focus of our work and we have seen that again by being consistent and not changing things every time you turn around we can see success which is what we have done and so going forward our district priorities for 2223 the social emotional and mental health supports you've seen us increase our funding in that area and the supports in that area for our students educational technology every single classroom in our district thanks
035to mr baker and his division all of our classrooms are now equitable they have the same promethean boards they have the same teacher desk they have the same equipment in order to deliver that quality instruction every single classroom has been equipped equitably across our district which is a huge feat for a department that many times you don't hear from but we see the evidence of their work every single day and this has happened while their regular job continues and so if we can just give a round of applause in that area we are also one-to-one with our students with regard to chromebooks and we even have a replacement cycle in place so that as materials may be damaged or we don't recover them we have a replacement cycle in place as well as a way
036in which this coming year we're going to implement students accountable because one of the things that we've seen is that if we are constantly replacing then we are spending money two and three times over and so we're looking at a better way of holding our students accountable for not damaging the materials but also making sure that they're protecting it and being very responsible with how they utilize those materials safety and security we have looked at additional home monitors and security personnel we are still hiring in those areas we had a really good turnout and i know that mr thompson is very happy with um the last round of interviews that we had and we have a lot of those positions filled in place but we are still hiring for those positions in safety and security
037you've seen a lot of work which are with our hvac and the ventilation and air filtration throughout the district this is one of the things that we have been working on especially as we get closer to the beginning of the school year we have a few schools left where we are still looking at some piping and things like that in order to make sure that we are ready with our hvac systems this was also due to some of our arp dollars that we were able to use in order to enhance our hvac systems throughout the district and of course accelerated learning and academic support looking at the fact that we have increased in the areas of our ela tutoring and coaches and the math and interventionists and strategies that we've been able to hire to
038put into those positions so that we can meet the needs of our students we've also tied everything to our equity metrics which really kind of closes that loop because we've done the work to look at seven categories of equity that we will look at measuring our success as we look to make our equity policy visible and make it real so that it manifests itself in our everyday work in the first category of equitable student academic success you can see the indicators and the objectives and the data that we are going to use to meet that but one of the things that we've done um is we have aligned our categories of equity metrics to the district priorities and so you'll see on each slide where the district priorities align with the equitable category category 2
039equitable student success beyond academics that aligns with our district priority of social and emotional and mental health supports category 3 equitable improvements to curriculum instruction and professional development it aligns with the social emotional and mental health supports our educational technology as you know we are looking at blended learning and we are taking it to the next level this year and then of course accelerated learning and academic support when we look at category 4 equitable resource distribution it aligns with safety and security hvac and the accelerated learning and academic support when it comes to our priorities category five success in equitable higher hiring and retention it aligns with the priorities of social emotional and mental health supports educational technology safety and security and accelerated learning and academic support category six success in equitable student and family
040engagement aligns with social and emotional mental health supports for students because we are expanding that to resources for our families with regard to getting them engaged and understanding what are the needs of the children and as a family how do you help that child move forward through those emotional social emotional and mental health challenges that they may experience also it aligns with educational technology safety and security and accelerated learning and academic support category seven the success in equitable community engagement as we know we cannot do this work alone and we we also welcome our community partners as we work together on behalf of our students it aligns with all of our district priorities social emotional mental health supports educational technology safety and security hvac and accelerated learning and academic support i'd like to close this
041presentation with a quote from one of the pieces of text that we are using with our professional development our theme this year is equity is action we have moved forward from defining equity actualizing equity and operationalizing equity and all of those things combined mean that equity is action there is no passive path to ensuring equity it's more than changing policies and adopting new practices and we have definitely seen that it is about systemic change and the stages of the systemic change over time and this is from ken williams and he is the author of ruthless equity which we will be sharing that out with our administrative teams as part of our professional development this year and the board will also receive a copy of that book superintendent thank you um i just wanted to uh
042a note of thanks i was very uh appreciative and grateful for the opportunity to sit in on a little bit of the administrator's pd yesterday um and got to see this all you know sort of unfold and take place and i thank you very much for that and and them as well um and another note just before i forget um i want to apologize for not being able to be at the north albany middle school ribbon cutting tomorrow uh i'm headed home to virginia first time in some time for a family reunion um and i really was debating i need to stay here for this um and i really want to but i won't be uh unfortunately so if you could convey my apologies to miss piper and um and the staff there but i
043know my colleagues will be present um and so i thank you guys for being there yeah okay um thank you so very much thank you and colleagues any other comments on this piece i just um i think it's very important that we uh always retain ownership of the concept of equity because it's something that is like proliferated in our society as a term but i feel like we are doing so much to operationalize it as you stated and you know the more we can continue to i feel like the e in equity is definitely has to do with being embedded because um we can clearly illustrate at every level with staff and with our philosophy especially the what do you call it the social emotional aspect how it's not so much about hiring external people
044to do social emotional it's about every layer of our um structure being embedded in that practice as well as i do remember an off comment about our the thank you for highlighting the graduation rate also because i think many people or many people are cert or feel that maybe had something to do with covid but it's actually long demonstrated that we were on an upward trajectory over time and that you know we are just reaching a pinnacle at this time and that's very appreciated as well thank you so very much i would i would like to add a little bit to that in that um one of the things through our administrative training that we've been talking about and handing down throughout the organization is the concept of equity is not something where we will
045check a box and it's done it's just not as we operationalize our procedures as we operationalize our practices it is ever changing it is always growing and so um i think sometimes as i listen to some of my colleagues and i watch the news about school districts embracing equity i i get the feeling when i hear some of the comments that over the district says or these districts are all talking about equity but look at what happened well i i do maintain schools are reflections of society and we look at our society are we in a 100 equitable society we're not so if that doesn't exist then school districts are not going to have right off the bat 100 equitable environments it is something that we work toward each and every day and when we
046see it we call it out and we examine it and we look at what are those corrective measures that we need to take and and i think the last piece that i i want to talk about when you when you talk about the e in equity and how we have to make sure that we are operationalizing that and it becomes part of our everyday lives we're not just applying the word when it's convenient we're not just applying the word when it is good for one purpose or another we have to consistently apply the word in alignment with our vision mission and goals and even though there may be different interpretations of that that's okay but we still have to understand that there are going to be different interpretations of equity but as a district we
047have defined it we have been operationalizing it according to our policy and according to our vision mission and goal and i think that's one of the things that's very important that we have to make sure that we remember savage please i just i just wanted to say um this is such foundational work and i really appreciate the foundation that we have been building over the last couple of years and i find this to be such a tricky concept because every student is only in one grade one year and those students need their they need to be treated equitably immediately and if they're not they miss a year right and we all know that and we're all working on this with extreme urgency as i know our teachers administrators and staff members are as well nonetheless
048we have all learned over the years that if you move fast you sometimes also move slow right we need the system to be moved forward systematically not just on an ad hoc basis um so that we can not just address inequitable issues as they come up but build a strong foundation so i think we're doing everything in our power to do both and i think the fact that you're very focused here as we have been at the as as a leadership team for some time on moving towards a really measurable question of are we moving forward and right now the best way we have to measure that is not just our increasing graduation rate which is increasing and is 82 and is likely impacted somewhat by the covid um factor well that is it was
049increasing well before that it was infected one of the things that's really meaningful about that is that our racial subgroups are um getting closer and closer to each other in terms of their graduation rate and i think that's a very clear measurable indicator of the work having the the results that we look for and i'm so looking forward to all these other metrics being consolidated into one place so that it can really be seen um in in a concise way so i just i just need to talk about that that urgency and foundational work and that they are both happening um at the same time thank you dr terry the instructional framework slide i mean it's not much different from the first time you presented it at convocation i mean the conversations we've had since
050then and you know even though the pandemic made us pivot right through all these changing constantly changing situations you and your team have stayed stayed with those goals and missions that we decided right in the beginning and it's been it's been long and hard but we can finally i think we've come to a point where the system is slowly in place the wheels are moving the direction you want it to you can start seeing the results so thank you for all that hard work and um you know we you know had the pandemic not happen you would have seen a lot more success than where we are but we are seeing successes and so we should celebrate those successes and uh as uh miss wilson mentioned you know equity is a word that is constantly
051thrown about everywhere and every aspect of life these days but it's not an easy task that is going to happen with the snap offenders we've been working on it for four years you will still be working for the next four and not achieve complete equity but we will be making constant progress so uh i mean i'm grateful to be part of the leadership team to be able to try to do something in this direction and i think we're already starting disney success hey superintendent i think thank you that's great thank you very much all right this is the time we set aside to hear from members of the public the board always welcomes input from the community about the decisions we're making for our long-standing policy the board sets up to 30 minutes of each
052meeting excuse me to hear from district residents parents students and other members of our community if there are more comments than can be accommodated in 30 minutes who may choose to extend the length of the public comment period or alternatively to establish a second public comment period leader in the meeting for our new public comment policy we also accept comments in writing virtual live participation and by voicemail comments that are not in person must be made at least six hours prior to the meeting to give us time to collect and verify them as needed written comments must be limited to 400 words and voicemail comments to three minutes all comments must include the commenter's name and place of residence we do not accept anonymous comments if you would like to submit a voicemail or written
053comment for a future meeting we encourage you to review the quote addressing the board and quote information at albanyschools.org forward slash voe as well as the instructions on how to sign up for the virtual live public comment we ask all commenters to keep in mind that information about individuals excuse me individual students and specific district staff cannot be shared not only is that a violation of privacy but every student and every staff member deserves to know that concerns about them will not be aired in public excuse me also keep in mind that public comment is not necessarily the best place to first alert the district to a concern that you have we ask that you share concerns first with relevant staff such as the teacher or school leader principal if you feel the concern is
054not addressed adequately you may appeal to that person's supervisor up the chain of command if necessary to the superintendent decisions made by the superintendent may be appealed to the board as we have for a few board meetings now we received a voicemail in uh tonight uh let's get right sorry i know that our board speak for our board colleagues when i say that i'm pleased that we are starting to receive comment in various languages um although tonight may be in english but we will be updating our policy to reflect our policies around this but meanwhile for tonight we will play the voicemail so that you won't hear it from its original form and if need be we would translate that into english the particular voicemail was sent tonight and i think we only have one
055and we are ready to play if you are oh sorry was that not a voicemail no for pete's sakes that was me being it was virtual right virtual all right so we do have a virtual comment is that correct okay there we go nonetheless i'm glad that you have instructions on how to do that now okay i think miss laura duran can you hear us um can you hear me yes you can hear me okay great thank you um my name is laura duran and i am the parent of two albany public school students i'm writing today because i became aware of a significant change to the myers middle school instrument curriculum in the past couple of weeks starting this fall the ensembles will be divided by grade and not by a student's current level
056of musical instrument proficiency when i inquired further it was explained to me that a meeting was held in june where this total restructuring of the myers ensemble curriculum was decided upon the myers music instructors were not part of this meeting and no notice was given to parents about this change until word spread through unofficial channels i point this out because the recently imposed curriculum change is in opposition to the district's own fine arts curriculum review process which is a multi-year process the process as described consists of one year of review research analysis and planning followed by four years of implementation and monitoring the curriculum is to be reviewed by teams that include the teachers whose assignments correspond to the curriculum that is being considered there are many issues that arise when changing ensemble groupings at
057the last minute with no instructor input change may be called for in the myers instrument ensemble curriculum but it should be achieved through the proper process so that the program can become stronger and better serve all students this last minute change will negatively impact music instruction for myers students at all levels with the disruption to instrument education for students due to the pandemic changing the grouping by grade at myers is particularly challenging at this time because it will require a complete transformation of the curriculum for each ensemble with proficiency level grouping as it has been an instructor has a much more narrow range of students in a given class and so students can work on large group lessons that are accessible to the range of experience in that particular ensemble this would be similar to
058how the district has organized the middle school math curriculum to group students based on proficiency either accelerated regents honors or grade level classes that way teachers can better differentiate within a class i urge the board and district to take a step back and go through the official fine arts curriculum review process with regard to transforming the myers transforming the myers instrument program in doing so the instructors will be part of the process and can address the issues raised by the proposed change and work collaboratively with administration to meet the needs of all students in our instrument instrumental music programs thank you to the board and administration for all you do for students okay thank you i do believe we have one in-person comment the correct um and while you come on up please uh miss
059schwarzma okay um one second but please have a seat uh and i think you already let me know corrected your name i'm so sorry i'll work to get that right um when i recognize you please state your name and city of residence and uh and know that your statements are limited to three minutes dr chatur our board secretary will give you a one-minute notice and a 10-second notice and i will notify you if your time has expired it's a good idea to look up occasionally to see if he's leaving the time card at you please note that the board's policy is not to respond during the public comment period if you need a response please contact us by email phone or postal mail our contact information is available at albanyschools.org forward slash boe and i
060will respond on behalf of the board all righty so uh you are all set thank you my name is rebecca schwartzmer i'm a resident of albany um this is an issue i'm bringing uh to the board's attention uh due to the um proximity to the beginning of the school year and this we hope to get resolved before the school year starts uh thank you for giving me a chance to speak my uh i am here representing both my family and another family that was unable to make this meeting our children attended a private religious school until this past year when they were in seventh grade that school is not offering an eighth grade class this year so we are both enrolling our children in the albany school district we are we registered our children at
061the end of june and were automatically assigned to north albany we both submitted open enrollment forms stating that we needed our children to attend either hackett or meyer so as those schools are closer to home for religious reasons we are orthodox jews and one and one of the commitments of our faith is sabbath observance the sabbath begins fridays at sundown which in the winter can be as early as 4 p.m since the school day does not let out until 3 p.m this creates an undue hardship on both families in order to get our children home in time for the sabbath we would have to pick up our children early depriving them of education time friday afternoons for multiple months of the winter this will interfere with their education we both received our determination letters regarding
062open enrollment this past monday august 22nd both of our requests were denied we each wrote an email to the signer of the denial letter ms mckenna assistant superintendent for secretary secondary education we stated again that this was a religious obligation miss mckenna denied our request again although she did tell us our children were wait listed we have a virtual conference scheduled with her tomorrow morning to work on this issue but i still felt it was important to bring this to the school board's attention tonight to ensure that our children are no longer denied their religious accommodations we cannot wait for the school year to start and hope that enough spots open up to give the children space to move uh my daughter suffers from mental health issues which would make switch switching school near the
063beginning of the school year problematic furthermore we are not requesting that they are both assigned to the same school we're simply asking for one spot at hackett and one spot at myers both of which are far closer to our homes than north albany uh for example i am a half mile from uh meyers as opposed to seven and a half miles from uh from north albany in summary you cannot place children in a position to choose between their full education and their religion a change must be made before the school year begins so that the religious needs of our children are met thank you thank you very much we appreciate all public comments and we find hearing from the community members very valuable again our contact information for both public comment and routine correspondence is
064at albanyschools.org forward slash boe next up we are at routine consent we now move to that part of our meeting during this portion of the meeting we approve routine matters for the district these include items like contracts field trips personnel matters and the like each board member reviews each item carefully but we vote on them as a group with no discussion that allows us to use our meeting time more efficiently nonetheless each board member has the option to set aside any routine consent item in order to require a separate discussion and vote on that item and with that introduction i will now entertain a motion to adopt routine consent agenda motion savage second dr chatur are there any set-asides mr almany and what number is that sir uh it's number 10 albany community action commission
065all in favor of adopting routine consent less the item 10. um and let me just make sure mrs wilson i'm sorry did i see your hand i'm sorry we're accepting them as a group or we didn't have set-asides right it was a set aside for item 10 so all in favor of adopting routine consent agenda uh less the following one and that's item 10 albany community action partnership okay that's everyone unanimous okay no opposition no abstentions okay um let's see and no i'm sorry may i have a motion to adopt item 10. this man second miss kriechi is there any discussion mr amignale so i just wanted to say i usually set this aside because i used to be on their board but i'm going to start now voting on it because i'm no longer
066on the board i just want to make that clear okay thank you very much all right uh all in favor of adopting item 10 that is i'm sorry ms wilson okay thank you very much that is unanimous thank you very good superintendent any additional comment here on absolutely uh we are so very excited and so very happy to welcome mr joseph karas who is joining us as our new assistant superintendent for business and finance um he has gone through the interview process and he is our selection and thank you under routine consent you have just adopted his appointment and we welcome you to the city school district of albany do you have a few words uh good evening and thank you um thank you superintendent adams and the board of education for approving me and
067the resident um currently or formally i have i was at shawna central school district as the assistant superintendent for business um prior to that i was a fond de fulton goal as a business administrator um but i'm very much excited i cannot wait to begin and be a part of the uh leadership here at the state scholarship of albany um and most of all i'm just proud that i'm going to be the next superintendent for business here at the city school district involving thank you thank you so very much and i think you might want to introduce someone else who's here with you i want to thank my beautiful wife valerie so she's always my uh support so i'm very grateful and we welcome you to the city school district of albany as well so
068thank you thank you very much mr karen welcome aboard okay next up uh several action items excuse me one second he's asked if he could join in his normal seat and i said absolutely you're more than welcome to but that doesn't mean that you have to stay that's fabulous no questions no we won't do that to you we're just laughing that we will not ask you any questions tonight very good congratulations and thank you again uh as as our normal practice here we have uh an action item regarding the professional development plan that was made available to the public for review and to and discussed at length at our last board meeting um colleagues as you know we continue the discussion tonight before the vote or we can make uh the action item i just
069did that wrong we can take action on this item um may i have a motion to adopt the professional development plan and that's unanimous oh excuse me excuse me i'm sorry i'm coming i'm getting it mr elmanawi may have a second it's crazy here we go all in favor here we go that was unanimous okay we have on our agenda the next item is uh action item is our dsip and we did have a nice presentation on that and our subs but our decept last uh meeting uh may i have a motion to adopt the decent this man seconded by dr shater all in favor of adopting that also is unanimous thank you and next up policies may i have a motion to adopt or would you like me to take these all at once
070okay actually would you like to do the pleasure okay all right uh so i'd like to uh uh before you are several policies uh for action um 26 2160 school district office employees code of ethics 5500 student records and 6700 purchasing which we did discuss last meeting may i have a motion to adopt dr chatur have a second yeah i'm just gonna ask for a moment of discussion before we actually vote though after the second after the second is yes ma'am okay would you like to make okay just take a second on that just for the record sure sure thank you miss savage all right is there it is there any discussion i just have a very brief moment of discussion i just wanted to point out that we did make a change to the
071policy at the after uh board member wilson asked us a question last time about how the phrasing was around um uh uh new york state preferred providers who we are legally required to purchase from and we did reflect that more accurately and more closely tie it to the law and so you should see that in the red line so i just wanted to make sure folks who were following along at home knew that that change had been acknowledged and researched and the change was made good thank you any additional discussion or else um all in faith all in favor okay and that is unanimous thank you all very much okay as is our normal practice also we've arranged our agenda with all action items here at the beginning unless there's something unexpected happens we do
072not anticipate the board will take any further action tonight the balance of the meeting will be items up for discussion some of which will lead to an action item either at our next meeting or a future meeting and that brings us up to the topic of superintendent take it away thank you so very much madam president i have a request at this time because we do have our safety and security leadership here mr thompson and mr fargion and they are presenting in person and our other presentations are virtual so i would request that the board make a motion to adjust the agenda motion dr chashur second miss man all in favor you've got it superintendent thank you thank you so very much mr thompson and mr fargione if you will please join us at the
073microphone we will proceed with our safety and security presentation this evening i i do want to take a minute as they get settled and we have the presentation of today um his department this department was responsible for some of our training today which regard with regard to threat assessment and it was absolutely phenomenal we had a guest speaker come in today and walk us through scenarios taking listening to the different challenges that our administrators face on a daily basis but also providing us with hands-on real-time strategies that we can put to use tomorrow and and i want to say thank you so very much for that quality presentation today and professional development you've done in a short amount of time both of you have extended yourselves um beyond measure you're there when we need you
074you're here when we call you and even when we don't and that's okay but i just wanted to say thank you for your leadership and all the work that you do to keep our students faculty and staff and administrators and families safe so thank you very much thank you very much appreciate it good evening everyone i would first like to thank you for adjusting the agenda for us very kind very appreciative yes and welcome to our newest cabinet owner next slide i'm sorry uh so again for those that haven't met us my name is vince thompson i'm director of safe schools and violence prevention this is mad fargo assistant director of state schools and violent prevention and uh we'll move on from here we'll just keep you up for a few minutes here today we're
075just going to go over some of our community partners new york state department of edge regulations when it comes to safe schools and security are areas of focus going forward and then we'll have a time for questions if you guys can go back um regularly we have community partners that we work with on a regular basis the albany police department and the albany fire department they've been great um and very helpful throughout the years the albany county sheriffs have done some trainings with us and we're going to continue doing training with them going forward new york state police is always a very good backup plan um we work with albany county probation and we worked a lot with 58518 snug last year and it really was helpful different times during the year uh real quick
076here we uh go over this almost every year um we have district wide school safety teams building level emergency planning teams district-wide emergency response teams building level emergency response teams then we have district wide post instant response team and building level behavioral threat assessment crisis team which actually we were working on uh this week and then we have business building level post instant response one of the things we do on a regular basis is respond to things that pop up and that is far too frequent unfortunately and as we all know last year was a unique year for everyone coming back into the full school setting we tried as best we could to track the number of incidents we came across last year and it was a very arduous task that mr fargione entered a
077lot of this information into a spreadsheet for us but put it briefly as you can see from the slide here over the course of the last school year we responded to 433 incidents that required the response of one of the two of us or dr canzoni ball or assistant superintendents mckenna or wilson turner that's 433 incidents over 183 school days over the course of the entire school year that is a phenomenal number and as you can see a little bit farther down 130 of those were outside of the school deck they occurred early morning hours well into the evening and a couple on the overnights so this is a monumental test to try and keep up with this and have one of us on the scene or responding or managing or assisting our building level
078teams as these incidents arise not included in this list are i hate to say it but minor incidents which would include a number of fights throughout the buildings that don't rise the level of drawing our district level team to that incident so there were certainly more incidents in each building level uh type of incident that didn't rise to this five response team and also other ones that we didn't track on the spreadsheet simply because we were there when they happened and so there was not a distinct record of communication on those extra incidents so this is really something that has taxed us and i very much appreciate the words of the superintendent as far as the training goes and really pps was a driving force behind this training today but it is a monumental test
079to to keep moving forward as we are spending days responding to countless incidents and again last year was a unique situation certainly as everyone came back into this environment that we had not seen in a few years it was a substantial readjustment but moving forward we want to uh increase the capacity of our building level teams that was part of the training today to respond to these crisis level incidents and be able to manage these threats and incidents a little bit better in a common language next slide one of those things uh includes the ongoing assessment of our district-wide integrated security systems one of the uh key items in there i would like to thank the board for the adoption of the resolution a few months back to move forward with a single source security
080provider with day automation in the avigilon system that work has made significant progress at the high school where we have converted the camera system and while there are still still a few bugs to iron out at this point we have made great progress with this new system moving forward there it is in place at tony clement where we had a test run of this system and it will be in full use at north albany as we move forward through this school year and it is a very user-friendly and efficient system for us to use that greatly speeds up our access to resources and cuts down on the time we're responding to some of those 430-something incidents as we move forward and into our other buildings with this system it will greatly simplify and unify our
081ability to manage these types of incidents one of the things we do there um is be able to communicate through this system we can share video internally with a number of people on different locations so that it's not as complicated or cumbersome as some of the systems can be where we pull a thumb drive and hand it to somebody else but we do this we're starting to do this now more with a security working group that was convened by mr kara's predecessor john yelsky and we have integrated a number of departments facilities i.t security as well so that we are all on the same page and with the support of our assistant superintendents and superintendents so that we are all communicating together for economy of scale for ease of use and to make sure we're
082all on the same page to make sure each building has a clear picture moving forward of where we're looking for it to be from a physical security posture but also a procedural posture and being able to allow the building level emergency response teams and they're planning to put forward a plan that is effective safe and functional for everybody involved part of that is our comprehensive professional development for hall monitors one of the things we accomplished later in this past school year was cpr training day for all of our hall monitors and that was very well received they were very appreciative to have that particular training which they had not seen a number of years and very thrilled for that we're looking to do more of that unified training and we bring in some building level
083teams with that we had some of the building level nurses come in and train with their teams so that ever again everybody is on the same page and able to understand common language and common terminology moving forward so that we are all headed in the right direction we have this culture of safety where we're all understanding the same message the same goal and moving in the same direction part of that again is our building level emergency response team meeting fidelity checks where some of the buildings are not as familiar with the incident command system or not as comfortable perhaps some of the team members are not as comfortable with the building level emergency response plan so we step into those meetings and help them and guide them and answer questions and if they need a
084direction or need a topic or need an idea on how to develop further we're there to help them with that our raptor emergency management system as you're well aware we use raptor for visitor management however the emergency management system we're developing that we've met with the raptor folks several times over the summer data integration is going on pretty much as we speak right now and hopefully it's complete in the next week or so where we will be able to push out an app to staff in the buildings where we will be able to initiate and of our shell procedures that's shelter hold evacuate lockout lockdown our emergency response procedures so we will still use the pa and the radios to announce those however we will be able to trigger those alerts from an app on
085our phones in that same vein not just on the phones but we will have ipads here distributed to all the hall monitors at the secondary level these um every hall monitor on the secondary level especially the middle schools in the high school will be assigned their own they'll be able to log in on their own and this is just going to help the monitors and the staff in the building help the students throughout the day in the buildings that they're in i know admin is very excited at all the all the building levels that the monitors will be able to have this and be able to help the students out as we go forward to the future here among other things these will have access to school tools so that if a child is unfamiliar
086with their schedule or lost in the building somehow especially as we enter the new school year and kids are transitioning buildings a monitor will be able to pull up their information and tell them exactly where they need to be and perhaps guide them there if that's necessary at that point in time but also installed on these ipads is the raptor emergency management app so they will be able to receive those messages deliver those messages when necessary and also a function within that app is something called team assist which is something smaller than our regular emergency response procedures but it would include say a sick person where we might summon uh the nurse a custodian and security or administrator just to deal with that individual and there are a number of functions we can build out
087with that but like we said we've met with raptor a few times that is ongoing and hopefully coming out as soon as possible as we already discussed a little bit the crisis team training and threat assessment training we did more of that today there's more coming next week and we just want to develop the ability of each building individually to handle their crisis handle the threat whatever might pop up as you saw one of those 430 free incidents over the last year this way when the buildings are more capable of handling those emergencies certainly does rise to our level so that we're aware of it so that we can coordinate because one of the things we discussed today is this child in one building is having a crisis they might be related to or friends
088with or somehow connected to children in another building and just because it pops low level on one radar or low level on another radar in a different building put those together when it gets to our level that's probably something that we want to pay a little bit closer attention to so that's again having everybody on the same page the universal training getting everybody coordinated is one of those key things and on a larger scale we've recently joined in with the albany county threat assessment coordination team where the governor's order mandated that the county organized this team and quite frankly in the discussions with them we do this on a regular basis unfortunately but a lot of the partner agencies coming into this don't so i suspect will be more of a resource than they will
089be to us but either way again it will be a county-wide coordination and even probably reaching out into the surrounding counties a little bit so that we again are on the same page should we have a low-level threat pop up to us if that same low level threat pops up in several other places that's no longer low level but we're all on the same page we're aware of it and we can coordinate and sort out that problem before it gets any bigger that's it in a nutshell questions yes okay i guess we'll uh take questions and let's prioritize those board members but it's great to go right in hi thanks for your presentation i really think it was a good explanation and a good way to go a little beyond what was in the powerpoint
090to explain what we're doing and how we're using technology to make our kids and our building safer i just wanted to expand a little bit i had asked earlier a question about how we announced that drills are drills and i think i might have inadvertently phrased it in a way that i was asking can you provide advanced knowledge you know that these drills that these lockdown drills will be taking place and you guys responded very sensibly that of course if you provide people you know hey we're having a lockdown drill tomorrow at nine o'clock they will pre-prepare and it will not be legitimate um [Music] they're not going to be responding as they would to an emergency that was not what i meant what i meant was in accordance with state recommendations and best practices
091are we announcing as the drill is occurring you know lockdown drill lockdown drill lock down everybody this is a drill and i was pleased with your response that that is part of the protocol and i would really encourage because not every because the district-wide document is what's available to the public and it's what's you know what each school is working off of really encourage uh language to be put in the district-wide policy that you use the word drill when you're announcing those lock-down drills we can we can definitely update the document we just wanted we wanted to make sure that it was clear that we do that in fact mr thompson explained that to the administrators uh as part of their training um on yesterday i believe that was that he specifically addressed that with
092our administrators that's really good news thank you very good doctor it's unfortunate that the world is getting to be a crazier place every day you guys are a huge monumental test of keeping all our children safe thank you for what you do day in and day out i had a question about the uh the ipads and it's for security but it also has access to a lot more data than the average ipad so hopefully the security of that security device is strong enough that in case it gets displaced or stolen or whatever data is locked yes we've worked with it to develop the security again it will be assigned to individual hall monitors and so they will log in and have their own security passcode on each individual device and they won't leave at the
093end of the day there's gonna be charging docks for these they won't take these home and they'll go right back into a charging station but in like any other ipad they will have an individual passcode to secure them and i will say one of the things that i've seen um that little handy strap that's on there when i see most of them they have it like strapped on so it's not just like you know holding it in your hand while you're trying to work it's like secure to your body if you will and and they use that strap and they have it on and it gives them freedom you know range of motion but also it's not going anywhere i guess that superintendent adams and board member should tour that these devices are enrolled in
094our mdm our mobile device management platform which gives us the ability to manage them in enterprise fashion meaning we have total control over devices whether on the network or off the network including the security local security that was mentioned by mr thompson thank you so much mr baker thank you oh excuse me miss wilson yes you're next hello thank you and plus one to many of the things that dr future said in gratitude so just three major things that i in summary which were happy to hear about of course that the ongoing relationship was snug and i think in future uh presentations we would love to see more of how that plays out or drill drilling down if possible because i think the community does look too snug as those credible messengers and as people
095who can relate to the students on a different level that most organizations because of historical reasons and or other things cannot so that was a very positive development as well as hearing about the acronym you show i think in the prior year i did ask like what is like something you know can we shorten it or how can we make it the something that rolls off the tongue and people can understand that we have like these pillars of um different threat assessments and hearing the term shell i don't know if you came up with that if that's what it's like industry but that was very like useful for me as well and the final thing i wanted to add was of course um hearing about the county coordination to me is huge i think it
096takes us from you know what happens often as a district is we're like based in a city but yet we're not municipal in that sense but yet you know we have so much responsibility that um many people surrounding us are often spectators to what's happening and then i think that takes a shift from a spectator role to a like a stakeholder role and thus we have more people who understand what we do and who can amplify our message or who can understand what's happening in that moment so this is to me a very positive development especially at the county level which i think sometimes people truncate things down to the city but not realizing that we are a small city but we are a gigantic county and we have a lot of different moving parts
097so that those were all positive things that stuck out for me thank you miss wilson miss band personally i wanted to thank you for all that you do and just in light of tag teaming on what dr couture just stated um the world is a kind of a weird place right now so i do appreciate all that you're doing um in regards to school tool and access that your staff will have is it the same level of access that teacher would have in terms of school tool or are there some i don't know if i'm even writing some firewalls i mean i'm assuming that if the kids lost with us and no class he's going to you have access to their schedule correct and actually if we can ask the man behind the curtain mr
098baker again certainly so we provision users in our school tool student information management system based on their role and the approach is globally just enough information as needed so to to state simply that a staff member would have the same level of access as a teacher isn't entirely accurate these staff members have the access required to form perform in their their job function basically so almost every single area of school tool is governed by a procedural policy that that we put so you can rest assured that those folks would have the ability to do the things that were described at mr thompson such as look up schedules but they would not be able to delve into uh let's say more identifiable information or sensitive information related to those students thank you very much that's what
099i was looking for thank you thank you miss savage i just wanted to ask you about well first of all i should add my thanks as well i hope that you've heard that loud and clear from every board member we do recognize the extreme amount of work that you all do personally and that your team does to keep our students safe and in this time in particular it's very much appreciated and recognized the question is you presented some data at the beginning around the number of incidents and then my question is whether you're tracking that on a multi-year basis and whether you think that the quality of the data that you're tracking is sufficiently accurate that it would be a meaningful comparison to look as sort of number of incidents divided by say number of
100secondary students to create sort of a per student incident rate this year versus next year versus the bond so we could look at trends or whether it's too variable because of the complexity of what you're doing we are looking at how to track that more accurately moving forward again with the last couple years there was no direct comparison with the volume of students in or out of the buildings and since i've been here two years and mr rg on one we didn't have a whole lot of data before that to compare to our method of tracking but this is something we are working on going forward and again one of the conversations we had with staff both yesterday and today to reiterate to each individual building to let us know when something happens so that
101we can track it so that we have a record of it and maybe put those puzzle pieces together so yes moving forward is something we want to track more consistently reliable so we can track that madam president vice president savage we have been also tracking this information and where you will see this information is in the high-level department report that comes from pps and so we have that longitudinal data with the asterisks that identify the covet years but um since mr thompson has joined us and exp and mr fargion we're able to create that new baseline and that new baseline is what we're going to capture in our equity data as we move forward so we've seen it at a high level through the pps report and that's where that detail comes in at a
102through when they give their department report uh but we are in the process of fine-tuning what that looks like for our equity sports um our equity scorecard so that we can start tracking that in a in a a more in a manner that aligns with not just our vision mission and goals but also our equity stance i hope that answers the question that i thought i heard okay very good colleagues any other questions seeing no i just wanted to thank you both very much for being here this evening and appreciate the presentation thanks for your kind words have a good night thank you for your time thank you have a good night so we have another discussion item here i think two more at this time i will turn it over to mrs bechtel because
103both of these areas are under her supervision within our division of curriculum instruction and professional development and tonight we're going to hear from our social studies department and our fine arts department so i'll turn this segment over to mrs bechtel our assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and professional development uh good evening superintendent and board of education cabinet um we're so happy to be here this is really one of our favorite meetings in our department as we get to talk about our content areas in a very deep way so i'm going to start right off and introduce elizabeth morphy these are the two newest members of our team by the way elizabeth morphy is the elementary humanities instructional supervisor and bob lokas is our secondary social studies and world language instructional supervisor they have prepared a
104presentation for you and i'm going to turn it over to them actually i'm going to pull the presentation up since i'm going to drive it and they are going to let me know when to move forward thank you karen just one moment one second okay are we ready to go yup all set um so this is the k-12 social studies curriculum review uh done by myself elizabeth morphy and robert lacasse and sean fitzsimmons next slide please so as always we wanted to start our work with the vision mission and goals because everything that we do honors and supports these district goals and priorities next slide so our process is to get grade levels together teachers and instructional coaches and department heads to look at our grade level curriculum as well as our course reviews and
105we use a curriculum review rubric um to rate these areas and its alignment to standards rigorous and relevant to best practices current events and diversity high quality instructional strategies and resources assessment quality and high expectations for all next slide please the curriculum review plan is a five-year cycle so this is year one for social studies where we go over the rubric have our findings and then we um give our recommendations and we have the next four years to start to implement some of those recommendations next slide so our k-12 social studies framework um was published in 2014 and revised in 2016. it is intended to promote civic competence through the integrated study of social sciences and humanities uh the primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed
106and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse democratic society in an interdependent world the framework is anchored in the literacy and writing standards and it is uses an inquiry-based approach where students develop thematic and conceptual understanding while applying disciplinary practices and literacy skills in the context of content next slide so for the elementary um as mrs bechdel mentioned i am new i began my um time here in albany in february and uh i was initially charged with you know going out and meeting people and getting into classrooms and you know creating some of those relationships and i think about three weeks in mrs bechtel mentioned that there was a social studies review to be done as well so in may um i worked with instructional coaches to go over the
107review to go over the rubric to really find the places where social studies was living at the elementary level as most of you i'm sure know our ela curriculum we do have a purchased curriculum which is wonders but the social studies curriculum it has a little more teacher autonomy and the ability to bring things in so it's a little bit more organic and so we did go go about finding that so basically our social studies curriculum currently lives within our seven day ela plan which is great because it already connects with the literacy standards because it is based on our ela curriculum it includes activities such as articles videos writing assignments there's teacher autonomy to add current events social justice activities um and any standards that they saw a connection with um that they could
108really move forward next slide so some of the uh recommendations and some of the things that we've already started doing is we added more of an inquiry base to the standards that were being addressed with wonder so we used the new york state uh website that has the c3 inquiries to give teachers some more information about how to dive a little bit deeper into the social studies standards we've also realigned the wonders unit so that social studies isn't doesn't have to be taught on the seventh day teachers can take a three to five day period to go more in depth um over a course of time rather than teach it kind of it was every seventh day for a five week rotation um but teachers will be given some time to really dive a little
109bit deeper into that part so that's happening in september and then the places that we want to go next are to really increase our social studies experiences for students k to five um which gives them the opportunity to really engage in that historical thinking in an authentic manner so field trips and really utilizing albany and you know community partnerships and and things like that that's the area that we really need to explore next um we also want to look at the standards that aren't addressed being linked to the wonders content and see where we can fit those in so that students have mapping and geographic reasoning and things that maybe don't quite connect to those wonders units instructional coaches will also work this year with our departmentalized teachers to make sure that they have enough
110content to really go deep with those kids so that when they get to the middle school level they have um they're ready for social studies to be a stand-alone class and then the other thing that we're going to do with the elementary and k-12 level is um mr o'cass and i are going to meet regularly so that there is that vertical k-12 alignment of not only the curriculum but the experiences that students are having next slide thank you elizabeth um so like elizabeth i was hired in may uh i began the work uh met with members of the social studies curriculum review team during department meetings uh common planning time to gather information to ensure that i was honoring their hard work during this process because this process had begun prior to my arrival so
111middle school so the majority of the units are aligned to the priority standards for literacy and social studies there are some aspects of the social social justice standards with a few lessons added to reflect the 1619 project but this needs to be expanded the majority of the curriculum includes strategic questions and opportunities that appropriately challenge students the curriculum includes some real world experiences that reflect the diverse student body and their interests but these need to be expanded um the seventh and eighth grade are much further along than um obviously sixth grade because seventh and eighth grade lessons um typically connect naturally to u.s history whereas um sixth grade social studies is more of a like our world history curriculum uh so the sixth grade curriculum does cover topics that do transcend world and u.s topics
112such as power who holds it uh topics like imperialism throughout the world and we have resources um that do reflect underrepresented perspectives throughout the course of history uh so continued alignment of the curriculum in rubicon atlas is is going to continue uh specifically with the addition of discovery education as a digital instructional resource next slide please so overarching middle school recommendations we're going to continue to promote culturally responsive curriculum and instruction with ongoing attention to equity diversity representation and social justice themes we're going to partner with special education and our l teachers to update differentiate and modify those ele lessons and experiences that are in rubicon atlas what we learned throughout the process is you know while we were in closure a lot of our lessons live in google but they they haven't made it
113onto rubicon atlas so some of those things are easy fixes support vertical collaboration between middle and high school teachers design more authentic assessments as defined in the new social studies framework develop common rubrics to be shared vertically with teachers six through eight and um to continue development of the engaging learning experiences that provide student choice 21st century learning opportunities and support collaboration and connect to students prior knowledge when we talk about vertical articulation we're really going to explicitly attempt to connect our grade six teachers with our world one and two teachers our seventh and eighth grade teachers with our u.s history teachers to ensure that that vertical collaboration is is ongoing in the next four years um when we talk about 21st century skill work you know life and career skills learning and innovation skills
114information uh media technology skills all those things will be expressly embedded in the curriculum we're looking to design more authentic assessments as defined in the new social studies framework traditional unit exams questions are going to be administered we're going to move to like more shorter quizzes exit tickets and bell ringers to provide more immediate feedback for our teachers on how their students are learning and then we're going to check for understanding of that content from unit to unit using updated assessments and then discuss the data in our common planning time and then develop areas of focus moving forward next slide so before we jump into the high school curriculum i wanted to talk about these these courses that we run uh called experience courses here here at albany high school this was new to me
115since i'm new to the district so experience courses so we have with the world experience and we have the american experience so the world experience course and they're both interdisciplinary and the world experience course centers on cooperative discovery of history and literature throughout the world from 18th century to present global issues it's designed to help students establish connections between political ideas movements and events that have shaped the world and literary movements that have created global cultures the american experience course um centers on literature of the united states it's designed to help students establish connections between political ideas movements and events that shaped our country and the artistic movements that have created our culture both of these courses are chronological and topical to literature and history that provide a framework of study for both the us
116and world experiences students read a variety of short and longer texts that complement the exploration of of world history and relevant primary doc primary source documents as well as the exploration of the united states history primary source documents in u.s include but not limited to the us constitution and landmark supreme court cases next slide please so our findings in social studies so first uh in high school associates for world one and two and world experience some overarching themes here that we noticed for the audit the curriculum units for world history and world experience are fully aligned to the standards the english skills are embedded in the world experience course the world history curriculum identifies a variety of instructional strategies and resources for students to think critically the world history curriculum includes strategic questions and opportunities
117that appropriately challenge students but differentiation for spending l students is present but that can also be strengthened and our constructive response questions also known as crqs as well as enduring issues essays have been developed to provide standards-based assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of lessons but more development is needed when we talk about the curriculum for world history and world experience these include topics you know obviously ela topics as well so writing workshops enduring issues essays as well as ela text analysis and and close reading of documents the social studies practices are vertically aligned as well so we talk about things like purpose bias historical context things of that nature that are those social studies thinking skills and they're expressed explicitly embedded in the curriculum english skills like tone diction central idea are also explicitly embedded
118in the world experience course we're going to continue alignment of resources to the new global exam that was changed a few years ago next slide so the u.s and american history uh experience courses so these are classes that are typically uh taken for juniors 11th graders at albany high the curriculum units for us history and american experience are fully aligned to the standards the interdisciplinary connections in the experience curriculum are robust student-centered which promotes college and career readiness as well as civic engagement the lessons materials and eles and the u.s history course provide some opportunities for students to explore topics further and lessons and materials are constructed around the regents exam using multiple choice questions document-based analysis to gauge uh and civic readiness essays to gauge student progress the addition of stamped by jason reynolds
119and ibram x candy to the experience curriculum brings a modern date some modern day issues into the classroom through the lens of history however um what the teachers found throughout their um in looking at their course was that there's no specific research or any other style of assignment that students can access to utilize this to help them gain better knowledge of the topics that are studied so continue they're going to continue to develop lesson activities and research projects that afford our students the opportunity to make explicit connections between historical and current events particularly as they relate to groups that have been historically excluded from instruction in american history the new u.s history exam has not been given yet i don't know if you remember but back in june it was cancelled uh due to a
120question um that stated didn't feel was was appropriate so the next administration for this that they're going to attempt to make for this new exam is going to be on june 1st next slide please so when i was hired in may um mrs bechdel said you have to do two things you have to do this curriculum review presentation and um you have to make sure that we are ready to go uh for next year and an adoption of the new york state seal of civic readiness so i'm here to proudly tell you that um that we uh albany high school has recently been approved to offer the seal of civic readiness for 22-23 school year so the intent of this seal is to encourage the study of civics and civility through learning experience certify attainment
121of civic readiness provide employers with a method of identifying high school graduates with skills and civics and civility provide universities with an additional method to recognize applicants seeking admission prepare students with 21st century skills recognize the value of the k-12 social studies education in schools as a means to build civic knowledge empower students as agents of positive social change and to redress historical and contemporary oppression and strengthen our diverse society the seal of civic readiness is part of an approved four plus one pathway to meet new york state diploma requirements the seal of civic readiness can also be a standalone diploma seal for students who choose a different four plus one pathway or a traditional diploma in order to earn a regis diploma student must pass five regents exams or pass four regions exams and
122complete a pathway the seal of civil rights is now considered an approved pathway that will count as a fifth regents exam um sorry i'm toggling between two screens um civic readiness is the ability to make a positive difference in the public life of our communities through the combination of civic knowledge skills and actions mindsets and experiences uh civic ready students use civic knowledge skills and mindsets to make decisions and take action for themselves their communities and the public good as members of a culturally diverse democratic society schools like ours therefore must provide students meaningful opportunities to develop civic knowledge skills and mindsets to participate in authentic actions and experiences that are necessary for them to function as productive civic participants within their school and community i asked um our albany high school social studies department
123head uh sean fitzsimons to join us this evening and he's going to discuss opportunities for our students to make these connections within our community good evening everybody and thank you for letting me join you today bob thanks for asking me to be part of this um i am as of last year the social studies department chair and one of the things that i was asked to do and that that role was to start to really think about how we could um implement the seal of civic readiness and one of the most important things i think about uh when i think about this this program is um the community engagement and connections and authentic experiences that our kids can be involved in and so um you know we're so fortunate here in albany with just the
124tremendous number of civic activities and groups and things that kids can be engaged in and i'm just going to share with you a couple of things that i have personally done in the last year to sort of get the ball rolling with this but let me say that this list is not in any way shape or form exhaustive it's just sort of a sampling and it's something that we're going to continue to expand on and uh honestly it's it's tremendous work um and i'm going to note please listen for it board members that um at the end of this sort of spiel i'm going to specifically ask you to help us with this work and to be engaged as well so i'm going to start by saying that i recently joined the board of the
125albany fund for education and what a great organization with such tremendous connections and so i think about people like paul collins hackett who's on the community police review board i've already talked to paul about ways to get our kids involved in this to be able to give them the opportunity to understand how to use their voices to affect real change in that area i think it's something it's there but we have to figure out how to get our kids connected with it and somebody like paul would be perfect and he's very willing to do that work of course i think about ginny farrell and the work of the common council um they've done work in the past with small groups of students um but i'm hoping that we can really ramp that up and you
126know get for example common council members into the high school so that students can actually speak with them and meet them in their own place so to speak um i'm planning to uh speak first thing to the ptsa this year my goal is to not only inform parents and community members of the seal and you know hope that they will speak to their children about it but also to sort of seek their input on what types of organizations might be involved maybe they're involved in something in the community that kids can get involved in so really trying to make those authentic connections um with real community members we already have a great relationship with the naacp and you know last year actually technically the year before um started up a partnership with them and a
127group called the people's perception project to bring in groups that have sort of um untraditional sort of voices they're not you know sort of some of the more mainstream groups everything from um the the poor person's campaign to uh freedom unshackled um so these are groups that are doing great work in the community that our kids may be interested in partnering with um to uh you know at the very least make them aware of great civically engaged groups um that the kids can be aware of and so we we started that work a couple years ago we continued to expand it in this last year and this year our goal is to actually do something like a community organization fair um where a number of community organizations are brought to the school and sort of
128like a college fair where kids can kind of walk around and learn about colleges it'd be the same kind of thing and maybe even developing partnerships i'm very involved with the league of women voters and they've been extremely engaged with our students on on voting registration but there's so much more that they're willing to do and that we can do i'm very excited because at the high school at least with some of the new spaces that are opening up um you know like for example our auditorium is now going to be available in the coming year um you know being able to get the league of women voters to um just bring in bring in community members bring in people who are willing to speak to our kids about civic engagement um they're very interested
129in that work and and i'm hoping that we can continue that with them um the federal district court has already said to us we'd love to bring in a citizenship swearing-in ceremony to the high school and we want your kids to attend and we even want your kids to participate these are the kinds of things that kids can actually take advantage of and by writing reflections on this they can actually get points towards the seal of civic readiness authentic real important learning experiences and the last thing i'm going to say is that we have so many opportunities already within our district that i'm hoping we can leverage i just take for example torrey chapel and her food bank you know there are certainly opportunities for us to get kids more engaged and things like that
130and they can earn community service hours that actually can apply for points toward the seal of civic readiness and the last thing i'm going to say about opportunities in the district and then i'll be quiet sorry i spoke so much is um you know i would love to work with our board here to figure out ways to get our kids to attend and you know maybe even participate in your meetings i mean i think about democracy and i think about where it starts and it starts in places like school boards and so you know i i don't know how active you've seen students i know that there have been instances where you know you get very active as students who have a voice but i'd love to make this sort of a regular thing almost
131like an expectation that students attend at least once a year so that they really understand this element and so i'm gonna you know reach out to some of you all some of you i know and i'm hoping that we can develop some sort of protocols for this get our kids in there get them working towards the seal of civic readiness thank you very much i appreciate it all right thank you sean um so continuing on so that um segues nicely into next slide please our civics and public engagement course so one of the things that worked really well was the development of this this civics and public engagement course i'll talk a little bit about that in a moment but the findings the curriculum is fully aligned to the priority and supporting standards for literacy
132and social studies the majority of the lessons in engaging learning experiences work to encourage college and career pathways uh the curriculum includes learning activities that have real world career or global application and promotes interdisciplinary connections pre and post assessments are present but a greater focus on the data is needed to create a a culture of data-driven instruction within this particular course but it is new um so we are you know we're getting there with that particular course um in the civic engagement capstone project that is currently in place there that is going to be part of the seal of civic readiness emphasizes students creating their own social justice missions identifying where power exists where power can be shifted but it will need further development as we continue to grow the course and obviously um work
133to expand upon this this brand new endeavor that we're embarking upon here um so the curriculum includes learning activities that have these real world career and global applications and those interdisciplinary connections that i mentioned previously you know in terms of like uh government state local federal government economics personal finance so this this course uh kind of does a lot um to really round out the social science education for our seniors um it combines government basically government and economics the civics and public engagement capstone project provides students with the opportunity to earn four out of the six points that are required for the seal of civic readiness so once we get um once we get moving there will be a chart and uh in that chart the students will know uh exactly where they've earned points
134where they can earn points uh to get to that seal once they've earned all six we apply an application we send an application into the state with all the students names how they earn the points and then they receive a seal on their diploma next slide please so our overarching high school social studies recommendations uh we're looking to develop more authentic 21st century skill work into collaborative research projects we're going to partner with our special education and l teachers to update differentiate and modify our eles our lessons our resources and experiences for our diverse learners that are in rubicon atlas we're going to develop common rubrics for social studies courses 9 through 12. continue to promote culturally responsive curriculum and instruction with ongoing attention to diversity equity diversity representation and social justice themes ensure pre
135and post assessments are thoroughly developed for data cycles conversations during cpt meetings uh the curriculum units in us history will continue to be aligned to the new york state exam once it's given at the end of 11th grade so once we see the administration and then we we look at how our students did um we grabbed the data from there we'll be able to develop you know lessons around how to improve those skills and then obviously begin outreach and raise awareness of the seal of civic readiness um moving forward we're going to continue to develop a bank of formative assessments and common primary and secondary source readings to bolster those units uh incorporate unit specific lesson activities instructional strategies um and specific guidance for strategic grouping of students with unfinished learning as well as those
136who are already performing at or above proficiency and then uh finally uh continued uh rubric development for a stronger evaluation of the capstone project uh we didn't pilot this last year so we're considering this year our pilot year so once we get through this year and we see how many students have earned the seal you know we're gonna learn um live and learn through the process and bolster and see if we can get more students involved for the following year next slide uh but i would be remiss if i didn't um thank the secondary socialized curriculum team for all their hard work phil mavricus stephanie zacker uh stacy moscato john batch henry kumaletti stephanie hogan ashley lackas amanda weckler and obviously um sean fitzsimons here who have been instrumental in in helping me um you
137know get my feet wet and jump right in here in the city school district of albany and that is it thank you at this time we'll open the floor for questions if i may um i just wanted to uh just make sure that we acknowledge uh miss morphy mr cost and mr fitzsimons for the work that they've done they definitely have embraced uh our equity stance they have absolutely worked collaboratively to ensure that our students are learning how to think not necessarily teaching them what to think but teaching them how to think at higher levels and of course appreciating the sense of urgency as we manifest our theme of equity is action and i just have to just acknowledge mr fitzsimons for his work and partnership with my brother's keeper that has been an extraordinary
138addition to that particular program and thank you so very much all three of you for the work that you do thank you all um and mr fitzsimons you know you can call me um uh thank you very much this is great let me uh go to my colleagues miss savage you had a question or comment so i i was i think on the same lines i wanted to assure you about that we're very interested in having um uh student involvement at the board level this is looked at different ways at different times and in fact in 2020 20 right right as we were going into covid we had a formally formally adopted board goal to reach out to student governments at each secondary level and specifically work with them so they could understand what the
139board does and see what how we could integrate better with them and that was dashed on the shoals of covid and did not get implemented in the way we had originally intended and so the timing is excellent for us to be working together to figure out how to increase the level of student voice at the board level right and we actually have had some of that discussion with superintendent um but both ms savage and i have been very involved with some students across the country who are uh very active in school board matters and so you know they have kind of pushed us and other board members across the country to uh to really to really hear them and to uh take their perspective and actions uh seriously so we are very excited about um
140you know this this engagement so thank you very much um dr shater do i see your hand i'm sorry miss wilson please go ahead hello and thank you um for your presentation i did love the initial definition that you read and i you know naturally so this context for me i'm a bit of a history about social studies was my thing in um high school so i always consider social studies really placing me or myself in a historical or cultural context and something i'm always like trying to do is have a footnote or a mental note that this you know a this is land is for lack of a better term stolen and acknowledging that we don't get to have so many places named fort without acknowledging you know that there's some implied violence there
141additionally that the formation of how we came to be as a society this nation is also attributed to stolen labor so there's also there's a violence implied there and that you know us bipac people were always here we were always part of the story we were never footnotes you know um there's no american history without black history and i feel like there's many opportunities to play students from albany in a cultural context even if you talk about the south end north pearl there's the blake family who i believe that part of north pole will soon be named after adam blake and his family hermann melville lived on over there there's naturally the underground railroad there's the historical context in the socio-economic impact of the empire state plaza being built there's the historical impact the socioeconomic
142impact of 787 being developed and why it was developed and why it was placed there i think there's also the sister of frederick douglass lived on maiden lane and of course um reframing the period of enslavement to be about abolitionist history so ironically i just received the book and i kind of feel like barbara smith right now because she always has a book it's called the agitators and no less than five times is albany mentioned and this is about harriet tubman and two other abolitionist women these are major opportunities to incorporate that into our curriculum and i think you know naturally everything you mentioned especially the abraham kennedy book the um student-centered one is a great opportunity and i'm not suggesting use this book i'm just saying there are these opportunities and um something i
143feel that would be so i appreciate your presentation i loved every aspect of it and i think um in terms of like thinking about how we deploy especially in the civic readiness part as you were speaking some things that came to mind were how do we employ all the principles that so that you know naturally our students are coming from different backgrounds there's different socioeconomic levels so how do we when we know we're deploying our students to do these projects or deploying them into the community that they have some kind of fundamental understanding of progressive stack which is essentially acknowledging that you know a we're talking about history we're talking about groups that have been marginalized uh disenfranchised and thus to upend that we're going to have to prioritize marginalized voices this is going to
144look different and feel different for people who may um for lack of a better term have different privileges and you know maybe more accustomed to listening versus speaking that may not realize that there's a time to step up if you're a person who doesn't get to speak often and there's a time to step back if you're a person who does get privileged and listen to often that it may not look like you being at the helm um all the time it may be you pushing but a marginalized group staring and you know that you know as we look into these things how and even at a young age at high school how do we make these not just symbolic or performative um you know gestures how is racism systemic how sometimes our silence can be
145a form of violence how you know we have a tendency to prioritize feel-good um scenarios versus you know simply just feeling what may be happening or are we tone policing are we spiritual bypassing are we you know engaging in white savior complexes are we centering folks so i think that we have to i think this that's sort of like foundational things i know from prior board meetings pd is very much trauma informed and our pd is very much culturally relevant based but i think it should be part of a civic readiness conversation because our students are i think earlier in the board meeting we talked about our i think the superintendent actually stated our schools reflect our society so as much as like it's happening at the level of adults you see this on the
146news it's happening at the level of students and so as we like deploy them to be ready civically we want to empower students that typically don't get empowered and empower all students and also like frame for students who may not realize that you know as they embark on these um journeys these are the things we want to front load them with that information if possible and definitely of course always have them understand the different levels of government the branches of government the opportunities they have to vote the opportunities they have that have nothing to do with voting like citizen advocacy and things of that nature and um there's many opportunities i think for that so i thank you for your presentation and it was very much appreciated yeah thank you so much and you know
147i think that capstone project like really provides a tremendous amount of student voice and choice in some in those things and how they feel and how they express um you know what's going on in their world one of the presentations that i witnessed uh as i as i was entering was as a young lady who um she did her entire presentation uh fulfilling all requirements of the rubric but but through a poem and it was it was moving it was beautiful and um you know and allowing her to to you know to do that and express herself in that way i think was it was a tremendous um testament to you know the hard work of our teachers in our department that's great thank you thank you both and miss wilson appreciate those comments um
148let's see dr chatur then scratchy and then mr albany thank you for what you do um you mentioned about um students being at the school board that used to happen in the past then we went away from that because you know the board meetings as you know used to go until two o'clock in the morning these students still have school the next day and we don't want to torture them that way and i noticed that in other districts like bethlehem for example students come in for a short period of time into the board meetings and they write a report on it to their further class but that was and i i i saw that happen a few years ago and now we're in the age of uh where we are video conferencing and you guys
149are home and we're here and the same same thing can happen with the students so students can definitely attend our board meetings virtually sitting at home even a short period of time and integrate their learning experiences with what we do here so i think there's lots of opportunities for development and as miss avid mentioned you know that was one of the board goals is to get more student boys and i think it's time to pick back that goal again and make it happen thank you and miss creation like you're next thank you yes absolutely that was that that was back one of the goals that i had decided myself to work on right before everything shut down so i'd be really eager to work with the high school social studies area and various student government
150organizations to find a way to get them involved and while this isn't something i'm personally part of we do have it as a board of governmental relations committee that works with local local and state government and that perhaps even could be an opportunity to get a student involved in in some of our uh lobbying efforts i've loved both i loved all three of your presentations one thing that really stood out to me was at the elementary level to be building more geographical awareness and knowledge because because it's not about reading and writing i think it can get overlooked and it's so important to understand history you know and a lot of the things that underlie these big concepts and equity like the underground railroad doesn't make sense if you don't know that canada is to
151our north or understanding how the world looks to understand how imperialism has come about so i really love that at the elementary level would encourage it again at the secondary level as well the other thing was i really love the description of the experience courses i did have a quick question about was the world experience course i'm guessing that one year elective for sophomores 10th graders or is it a two-year elective course for freshmen and sophomores sorry i can take this off the experience courses go ahead sean uh so the world experience course is a one-year course um it is uh it is an elective in that yes students opt into it um it fulfills their both so their social studies credit and their english credit um and then the following year they can um
152seek to take an elective uh that's the us experience course same thing it's an english credit and a social studies credit through through the one class does that answer the question yep and that was what i thought the answer was but i just wanted to make sure that it wasn't different than that i wondered do we run uh just one section of each of those and how popular are they and what are people looking for more of those [Music] bob could probably do a better job of answering that yeah we we do run multiple sections um of both world experience and american experience so yeah it seems to be a pretty popular course last year was i believe three three sections at each grade level okay that's really wonderful so it sounds like that those
153are really popular uh the other thing is i thought that i really loved this seal of civic literacy i wound up quickly googling what it took to get one because i was excited about it it does seem a little complicated i wondered if you guys are working with guidance counselors or other staff to have a cheat sheet for kids to say well what do i have to do to get this so that they're not coming in at the 11th hour in the fall of their senior year and i wondered are you guys going to try to seek this habits home in one of the academies um you know obviously kids from any school can do anything but just is there is their home important an academy that you could build that specialization i'll go ahead
154and start and then you guys can chime in um i i would say yes to all of the above uh we would use multi mediums uh to express and make sure that people are aware so that uh we are working through it yes it was quite a big it is a big deal to have the seal of civic readiness it is a very big deal um and so we commend everyone with all their hard work and making sure that this happens especially when they come on the job with you know less than a month or so um so we we definitely appreciate that and understanding that goes back to that sense of urgency um and making sure that we are all of like minds with what we know our students need and how do we
155get there as quickly as possible making sure that students are aware of it absolutely we will partner with our guidance counselors because that's where kids are looking at creating their schedules et cetera and that's part of the normal process that we would do within the program anyway is there anything else that you all would like to add i had one more i just said oh sorry not me i can just say that you know button bob please tell me to be quiet if that's what you want me to do but um you know i can tell you that what we've discussed and what we're really shooting for is our goal is to have every one of our seniors essentially um self-assessed by the end of september um i say self-assess we're in the process that
156we've already created and we're tinkering with and trying to perfect um like a google form that they'll fill out with assistance from their from their social studies teacher um and you know it's quite interesting because yeah when you look at this data material it's a little bit daunting you know there's these points and there's these different columns and it's a bit confusing but really at the end of the day our students um just by for example passing you know four social studies classes which is something they have to do already they get a point for that just by passing a regents exam they get a point for that and we are actually well ahead of the game in terms of this uh because our civic engagement teachers a couple years ago revamped the course and
157created that civic action project that gets them four points out of six on the on the rubric so really any kid that passes for social studies classes that passes a regents exam one of the two social studies regents exams and that successfully completes that civic action project can qualify for this this seal it's exceptionally exciting not every school has that opportunity that we built in it it really it just marries so well with what we're doing and um you know again by the end of september we're hoping to make every child aware of that um and then really kind of um kick in there's a committee that's being formed on this we plan on meeting regularly tracking student progress on this um you know helping students sort of that look like they're kind of falling
158off the the tracks a little bit um stay on it um guidance is definitely going to be involved in this it's certainly critical that they're they're part of this um so yeah these are things that we've thought a lot about and as bob said this is our first year doing it but we have a lot of these pieces in place and we're going to try them we're going to perfect them and i'm personally very excited about this work bob did i hit most things or did you have anything to add no no you hit it you hit it thank you so much sean and you know to that end about how you know sometimes state ed tends to um you know just just kind of overdo their language and so so to speak i was
159starting to put together a handbook and then sean took a look at it this summer and was like let's let's put this in some student friendly language and you know as we're rolling this out because we you know we certainly want everyone to take advantage of it and you know in the six points in the in the civic readiness uh rubric that's a minimum you know we have a lot of students in this you know in our school district already that are participating that are already doing a community service they're part of a junior rotc program they're they're doing mock trial you know uh national honor society um you know anyone that's an eagle scout you know that's doing an eagle scout project i mean there this this can go in so many different directions
160that students can earn points for um and be engaged in their communities you know we're really excited for that and obviously at the end of the year we're gonna do uh you know we're gonna put together all the data you know average together how many our average points where the points are coming from you know um where we can you know best serve you know our students uh with programming and um you know those really engaging experiences in our community uh miss craig before you go on what i'd like to do is uh i think uh mr albany has a question and then uh i want to come back to you but ask if it's really important because we have one more presentation and i want to keep us on time i apologize it was
161a quick it was a quick question but okay that's all right we'll let's go to mr romano and we'll come back uh i'll be quick uh so thank you all for your presentation i've always found uh geography and history to be one of the best subjects to learn primarily because my dad made me study for the geography when i was younger and um essentially it gave me kind of this insight into the world where you know where my neighbors were from where i was from where my friends were from and it really kind of opened up a door to me and so i was first question is do we engage it do we have our uh elementary schools engaged in the geography second question was uh along uh member krejci's line of thought about um
162how are we going to go about enrollment with this and if we already have this data on our students about what they've completed and whatnot we should or um are we going to kind of uh weave that in with some of the students that we you know encourage them to do this because it's in their best interest elizabeth do you want to answer that first question of course um so the geography piece um is not currently in social studies because it does not live within the ela curriculum so i'm looking at some supplemental resources that would help teachers to teach that piece of it so that is definitely a work in progress um that we hope to have in place as quickly as possible very good okay sean you want to add about uh sort
163of the point finding process sure so um so actually we don't have that data yet that's that you know we're going to be getting that this year so i want to make sure that's clear this is the pilot year so to speak um but it is certainly something we are going to be tracking and as far as encouraging kids to do that that yes hundred percent i mean that again by the end of september every single one of kids is going to be essentially shown how many points they already have and it's it's going to be explained to them just how accessible this is i'm not going to say easy because it's not easy to do that civic action project and do it well it takes a lot of work right but it's something that's
164already built into our curriculum and we are going to be framing it in multiple ways that show the children that this is something that is beneficial to them whether you're a kid who has struggled with social studies regions classes in the past and you need that you know four plus one aspect or you're the child who wants to show a college that you really can go above and beyond this benefits literally every single one of our kids and it's accessible to every single one of our kids and that's no joke no exaggeration that's how it's going to be framed that's how i'm going to frame it to the ptsa and i'm hoping they're going to speak to their kids about it i'm hoping you all are going to talk to the community about it because
165i think that's important to get through that's great okay so i am going to uh conclude this section um any questions we are happy to have you send them on to the superintendent or we can uh but we won't lose them but i really have to move on to the fine arts uh piece thank you all so much this was just absolutely exciting um and we could go on i know but let's get to the fine arts folks if we if you don't mind thank you so much thanks for the opportunity thank you i think the board likes the content presentations as much as as we like being here giving them so that brings um me to the fine arts presentation that um our very own kate wright will deliver and i will be bringing
166that presentation up as well if you'll give me just a quick second and i think i'm there if i am kate you ready to go absolutely can everyone hear me good evening here are you good excellent thank you good evening um i'm kate wright fine arts supervisor for the district i'm really happy to be here tonight to go through our 2021-22 curriculum review um want to go to the next slide so as you've heard in the prior presentations um our our district's guiding principles are part of this slideshow as well fine arts follows those that same process next and we also have a fine arts mission uh the top paragraph is our art mission and our our second paragraph is our music mission uh we believe the arts are integral part of our educational system
167uh we strive to make improvements to our program to the benefit of our students next here's the purpose of the curriculum plan i think you're pretty familiar with that since we just had the other presentation next and these are the what the plan requires and this is the cycle of the plan um i just want to point out that we do have a wonderful implemented curriculum but the next step for us is to better codify that to ensure that our written curriculum is intentionally designed to meet the needs and interests of our students it's important to note that what is taught not necessarily is what is in our platform for example theater program is primary primarily teacher designed and differs from year to year depending on the performancing topic um here's a listing of our
168fine arts department qrik and curriculum review team uh the vast majority of our department was part of this process i'm really happy to report that and a very special thanks to our team for contributing to this endeavor next here are the new york state arts standards back in 2017 they came out with new standards and with full implementation in 2018-19 the standards are basically derived from the national standards they're almost identical for exception of a few words um one thing i'd like to take note is that media arts was an added standard when this new arts standards came out next and here are our anchor standards and these are for all our arts i'd like to point out that performing presenting producing anchor standards can diff differ depending on the content areas and and result
169in artistic presentations creating conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work presenting uh visual arts interpreting and sharing artistic work producing media arts realizing presenting artistic ideas and work so there's some different ways modes of presentation and delivery of the curriculum next so the way the way this is um this slideshow is organized is we're first going through art elementary middle and high and high school by our pathways and then we're going to go through music general music chorus orchestra and band so for elementary our i want you to just pick take a look at the bottom right slide you'll see there's a key anything that's uh highlighted in green is considered well developed and yellow developing and red underdeveloped and there's a lot of similarities in some of the findings in our curriculum so
170what i'd like to just do um is to point out some interesting things that might be a little bit different uh for one for art pre-k uh pre-kindergarten curriculum um is not in our written curriculum and there are some offerings of that depending on schedule openings of teachers so that's something that is on the list of something we're going to work on and overall um i think alignment and pacing is another area that would be something that the elementary team will be working on and as you can see the other things moving on to middle school um on the left you'll see it's uh it's differentiated by grade level uh the findings you'll see there's some well developing and some some develop developing areas um interdisciplinary curriculum making cultural connections and real world experiences to
171improve it was kind of a highlight and connecting to the high school team to make sure that we're rigorous and we're ensuring that the students are ready for high school level work so that was the other piece i thought was an interesting note here next high school art so the first slide is the two-dimensional pathway you'll see that the courses in our two-dimensional pathway are listed on the left you'll see the color coding majority of them is considered developing because you can see the various colors the focus would be to to develop curriculum for our advanced courses we have the most courses that out of any department and a lot of times our advanced courses are taught by one teacher um and they they are the ones that seem to always need to have some
172development so i think for this process and this review that that's something to point out that we really want to get to those advanced courses and get that curriculum written and then here's some other notes research multiple resources really being ready for college art programs improving connections to college and careers getting alignment going and more opportunities for inquiry especially uh student-driven inquiry and we want to have those engaging learning experiences especially with covid we want to get kids hands-on back in the classroom and really enjoying their learning through the arts next this is the three-dimensional pathway oop pack up one yep on the left you'll see the courses um they're all highlighted in green the majority of them are well developed and with that the team felt aligning resources among shared classes so for example
173studio studio and art crafts is a very materials intensive course to make sure that every class has the same materials so that there's consistency and sharing and our media arts course pathway that's one of our newest courses and very happy to have our brand new media arts labs of high school opening the shark you'll see again the areas in green are are beginning our foundational media arts classes and as you go up to towards the advanced classes they go into developing and underdeveloped so again focusing on those advanced classes researching college art programs very similar findings next moving on to performing arts so as i said before performing arts a lot of times very teacher driven and depending on what the performance or the show would be for that year so you'll see that there's
174really it's a develop it's a developing area back in 2020 21 we created a theater manual that's a big step forward because it is really putting on a production company it's not just a show it has everything going on with it as most people understand and we need to get some of that more of that work into rubicon atlas and then ballet and modern and red is our brand new course for this school year as part of our dance program so that's something else that's highlighted moving on to music general music uh the elementary level it's a really well developed curriculum um again like art we want to include pre-kindergarten and the largest takeaway was the real world connections with 21st century outcomes uh covet has taught us all that how important tech integration is
175within our curriculum and that's an area that the team really wants to embed across the different grade levels at the elementary level amongst other things uh middle school uh same thing well developed but a little bit different more common assessment rigor and relevance in the curriculum getting kids to well first of all getting getting the classes more aligned um rigor making sure that their the bars raise higher and relevant because that's going to lead us to more student engagement high school so the high school has developed is divided up into our pathways this is the general music slide you'll see music production and technology pathway is really what it's under you'll see that most of it is well developed for the the two that are developing are advanced courses so again high school lots of
176courses and we want to have them developed and i want to point out um sound recording techniques is a new course being offered for the school year on to coral pathway the elementary course we're looking at collaborating with the team on content and alignment we want to have deep horizontal and vertical alignment and add common resources um but it's it's structured well developed we just need to get back to having elementary course and getting back to our normal way of school go ahead secondary course very well developed and the secondary team is going to be working on just content and alignment moving on to orchestra so orchestras divided into elementary and secondary on these on these slides uh elementary really got into it got in did we lose kate for a minute i think we
177did it looks like she's trying to get back in i could carry on here as i saw this the other day um in terms of the the findings and i know what she's going to say is our elementary strings teachers oh i was i was gonna get in and talk about how the elementary strings teachers got into so much detail over um looking at their curriculum and and this is where they they got to this developing piece but you carry on kate did i get missed did i freeze and even though i did you froze or you can pick up just about where you look okay sounds good yeah karen was right on that the elementary orchestra you know got really into the details of the review and really was able to highlight specific things
178that they want to make better they're really strong tight team we put the curriculum under developing because there's so many little things that they want to do um but you know majority of it is just content and alignment um and i highlighted just for notes for the board common assessments college career real world and global connections variety of lessons and resource resources for our diverse student interests strengths and styles so kids are more interested in what they're learning they're more familiar more connected to the work um i think that's a really great thing i'd also like to point out that the orchestra and band elementary teams collaborated together to come up with an instrumental exploratory program for our new beginners i think it is included in the report they really wanted to restart our foundations
179and that's something that i want to give them full credit and kudos on doing that work because it's really going to be giving the students the time to go through each instrument of orchestra each instrument a band touch feel ask questions pick their choice their instrument of choice and have that collaborative conversation with the student the teacher and their family so that the idea is that the students are really happy with what they have and that they'll stay with their instrument not to switch around that happens too next secondary orchestra very well developed i'd like to point out adding culturally responsive lessons resources that better represents the ensemble i think that was a really key finding for the secondary team moving on to band so same thing the the instrument exploratory program um they pointed
180out you know just wanted to add it into rubicon atlas in the alignment and differentiate differentiation areas but very well developed curriculum and then secondary band um we have our traditional band ensemble pathway but we also included the our newer courses piano and role drumming into that pathway and as you'll see the yellow highlighted areas are those advanced courses as kids are taking these classes they want to continue them so it's a really good thing a good problem to have because we want them to keep going trends for fine arts um you'll see alignment you know making sure that there's vertical alignment common assessments um getting getting everybody aligned and assessed differentiating the instruction for the for the needs of our students no matter what what background they have what abilities or disability they might
181have getting the real world connections culturally relevance college and career learning experiences and opportunities technology integration equitable engaging resources for a diverse population with different learning styles and needs and student voice initiating the questions and inquiries from students and interdisciplinary connections so those are those are like our key findings across the board and next step for fine arts is we plan to do a survey to include students and families so that we can really just elicit the feedback and duplicate what's really successful and make improvements to things that we need to improve upon take that information back and then collaboratively work with team meetings on our planning revisions and curriculum writing that's our next steps the summary um as our curriculum evolves we'll continue to have the conversations around the needs of our program including
182alignment and equitable resources so these are just overall arching things i know i've talked about the impact of covet on the program and hands-on learning and auditory learning and we really are coming back strong stronger than ever but there are things that we definitely want to keep doing advocating for the purchase and use of technology we want to purchase equipment and supplies across our system i think we do a really good job of it we want to continue to do that providing those performances and exhibition opportunities with our community partners who we love and within our schools as well um engaging learning opportunities then connecting the kids to the next level in the real world and college and career and like i said before alignment whether it's vertical horizontal just getting everyone on this part
183of the team aligned with each other keeping the standards high keep raising that bar and making sure that we're supporting an equitable equitable program that represents our diverse community and offering enriching learning opportunities to ensure students are engaged in a robust and comprehensive arts experience and i think i think we do that really well i think that having our community partners with us on that makes us even better i think we're really honored to be in the city of albany to have so many uh resources and community uh partners and opportunities for our students and i think of the arts in particular flourish and that um there's a listing in the report of our community partners but um that we're just so thankful to have and just overall can continue to have these amazing opportunities
184to engage kids and broaden their learning experiences and fulfill their dreams and goals questions thank you any questions colleagues or comments you talked about you know providing them with the global experience and in the music in the arts especially so i mean we have a lot of ell students here in our district and i was wondering if you thought about introducing you know whether it's instruments or music from different i mean i know that in coin when they have the chorus they sing songs from different parts of the world but you could also have youtube videos of things like different string instruments string instruments are all string instruments but they vary so widely across the globe and the octaves are different and in the way music is different and use that as an educational experience
185to expose them to how rich music can be with not being able to play any music i appreciate it very much you know and we don't need to own the own the instruments i mean if you have access to one that's even better but you know this everybody has a chromebook and they can all pick up uh youtube and pick up concerts and there's so much to music that can be learning for kids and especially in the last few years so many of our kids have gone on to done so much you know people have gone on to make music in the music in the film industry and they made us popular so um i i think there's lots of opportunities for us in thinking outside the box and you know and i want to
186thank um you know partners like the albany symphony orchestra who brought you know our our our working artists up from the city from different states to come in and work with our students i mean that's just such a wonderful opportunity for all of our students we had a dancer coming to from new york city who worked on the convergence program with our world drumming class with our dance class together we had other artists that came in and you know did some performance with our orchestra at the high school and just we've got a lot of great great opportunities just want to keep it keep that motivate you know that momentum going um because we're a big system we we can have you know we can do more we can always be doing more thank you
187anyone else mr element oh sorry miss uh and then um chris wilson um that's right thanks so much for your presentation it's really exciting to see the breadth of opportunities available across the different media and i really appreciated uh your i really appreciated in the report that you guys plan to do a student survey uh to find out what the students experiences are and what they want more of and what's working well for them just because you know it's about um empowering self-expression and i was really glad to hear it so thank you thank you and thank you for the details of what's going on at each level you're welcome wilson your hands up yes thank you um merrily just uh because i feel like this report was very comprehensive i'm merely just brainstorming about
188um something that eluded like uh dr chatur was alluding to which is um i don't want to call it non-traditional or atypical fine arts but i know that one segment of our community that faces an equity issue and i have no skin in the game i actually like like i'm not inclined this way but the one one group that finds i find has equity issues in our city are step teams they often don't have a home anywhere or are fighting for space and the ability to do that and you know they're home grown a lot of times so i just wonder if there's sort of any inroads because many of our students probably already on a step team if there's any inroads for that and define you know whether to even like you know as
189a community partner at a community school or something and similarly i think about um additionally we stradar mentioned this that students have gone on to do big things and i think about um what was head of state which is a student that graduated from albany high school who was in new york fashion week they were on the met gala you know red carpet and you know this and there also is very much a lot of local designers here so that's just something else that it comes to mind and then the final thing is international music like uh you know music from south america klezmer music things of that nature and just exposing our students to that there's uh instruments they may not have ever seen and you know some you know different composures and things
190that they turned this indigenous music around the world and that was just something else that came to mind but not anything like you said that we are are doing just more so just having that in mind and how robust we can make that i'm taking notes on what you guys are saying um i know that we we do do this we do offer the fashion illustration course at the high school and the advanced fashion um we used to have um the construction class which was part of facts um i think our our program kind of bloomed because of that removal of that that class um but that's something i that we talked about you know with the studio art and crafts class adding the sewing element into it getting sewing machines into the back of
191those new new beautiful classrooms there's space for it so doing some things for kids that are doing crafts there's embroidery already in that curriculum there's batik tie dyeing fabric so there's some textile like things and a lot of our kids from one thing that came out a few years ago when our crafts class came out the teacher expressed that the kids from the middle east uh were really into the embroidery um it was part of their culture it was a women's culture and they found that the boys were doing it learning it just along with the girls which you might not normally have in their culture so it was interesting that they kind of did this blend here being in albany um so taking back some of that and growing as uh educators and seeing
192what what's working for our students is a really important part of the process thank you miss savage did you have a question i did thank you and uh echoing the fine comments about your excellent presentation and the breadth of the opportunities that you all are providing we really appreciate um every year every time you come to us um one question i wanted to just follow up on was um i really have appreciated the commitment to on-ramps to instrumental music at the high school over the last couple of years right the addition of piano and will drumming which is relatively recent and it is very intentionally about providing on-ramps for instrumental music to students who had not had that opportunity for whatever reason in elementary and middle school and we talked at budget time about adding
193music staff and keeping music staff strong so that we could do some additional on-ramping for students for instrumental music at the middle school level because that's another kind of opportunity where kids open their eyes to oh maybe i'll do something different so i'm wondering what has been done this year in terms of supporting our and middle school students on entering um to new instrumentalists who were not instrumentalists the pride in elementary and or what else you have planned for helping our middle school students enter instrumental music as you've done so successfully at the high school well i think you know i know our middle school instrumental team was making a very uh specific effort to visit the elementary schools to visit the kids that were in fifth grade that were coming up to the high
194school because they haven't been had been in school in the same way this is a big jump for them um to remove that intimidation so the first thing was to have the relationship built between the incoming sixth graders and their teachers so that would be the first thing um i know that we've added a general music teacher not instrumental but general music teacher to our north albany program to support the equity for between the three schools also another art teacher there as well skip backing over to high school because of the piano and world drumming success we've had and then digital audio workstation and now sound recording techniques courses we've actually have six full-time teachers where we had five before and that's really due to the growth of the program so i think that's good
195i think we there's some still some work to do with the middle school um and i think that's something that um we'll have to come back and think through a little bit deeper on that i know there's you know there's some ideas i know it's a it's a pretty restrictive schedule on you know offering other things i mean i'd love to have like a piano lab at the middle school that would be a phenomenal thing to offer our students piano has taken off at the high school there's i think there's like five sections of piano now kids are really enjoying it and it's been only offered a couple years so i look forward to hearing more thoughts later it is something that came up during the music equity task force years a couple of years
196ago when that was done and on-ramp to instrumental music at the middle school level was a major finding there as was part of our budget conversations last year so anything that we can be doing to increase not just help up not making just making sure our fifth graders transition successfully and keep going with band and orchestra but to bring in new kids at this new opportunity because it's really if you miss that boat in third grade for whatever reason you know it can be very hard to get on the to get on the boat and i i want to make sure all of our students have that opportunity thank you thank you miss wright um for me it's very personal because i consider myself an artist and it's something that essentially is the mortar like
197is the mortar in my day um it breaks barriers it tells a story um and it's so much more than that i mean essentially everything can be done in an artfully artistic skilled way and that's kind of what i would love to see kind of this melding of the arts with tech with social studies with you know science like if you produce an excel spreadsheet and it's not artistic like it's not like beautiful i don't want to look at it and neither does your boss really i'm being dead serious like art essentially is ingrained in every single thing we do and if you do something really well you're most likely an artist so i want to see our program engage in like cutting edge art ai art um and these these things that people or
198businesses or companies or countries or governments are really looking for things that people produce that grab your attention you know everything that you see that you look at was done by an artist so you know there's no question in there it's more of like how do we entrench ourselves in the art i'll leave that to you because that's that's just my directing but thank you i'll just give you uh just to feed off of that a little bit i know like with our performance uh with the theater program um the film class was coming in and doing some filming um so there there's a lot of like inter-teacher partnerships amongst different arts courses um so i think we could be doing more of it um and i'm thinking of like automatically community partners you know
199the all the video game developing companies that have come to the area um have just bloomed you know in albany troy area there's some things that we could possibly be doing especially because we have an animation course now um and just raising it it's what it's what students are interested in doing and so i agree with you 100 yeah just to get students thinking that art is not like oh this is my relaxed period this is like something that it's a skill that you can take with you do whatever it is you're going to do in the future whether you're going to be a politician are you going to be a fashion designer whether you're going to be um you know an actuary an actuary scientist or something like everything you should do you should
200do artfully madam president yeah remember problem in yelling just to address some of the comments that you made um while we understand what we understand that it is very personal to you and um looking at what we have done over time with regard to our art uh program and to see a lot of the uh innovations that have come about i i think that as we look to incorporate our site visits with our board members i would encourage you to to observe our art programs and you'll see that seriousness and that quality delivery of instruction that i believe that that is what your question is addressing um in that as we look at the goal of delivery of quality instruction and i've had the privilege of going to art classes at all three levels in
201this organization and the the intentionality of our art teachers is evident when you walk into the room you can see that they are aligning at least especially in the courses that i've gone through and i've observed at the high school at the middle school level and at the elementary level you can see how those connections are made with students from the self-portraits as you've seen in the hallways here when you look at the opportunities that our students have had to do the 3d art as well as doing things so that they are connecting to their content area that intentionality is very real and and i think the other piece when you talk about how do we expand art i think when you go back through what we have been able to do especially through an
202equity lens um regardless of directive or not when you look at the equity lens of what we do with regard to arc you can see that it is one of the courses that creates and manifests equity because it is true that everyone is an artist to some extent it's just on a continuum of to as to the level of artistry that exist it's also when you think about the creativity and the way in which art facilitates critical thinking because the view of an artist is not necessarily the con the the concrete view that you see in one plus one equals two there may be an abstractness to that thinking that needs to come into play um and i will close with um my favorite area of creativity is technology because when you think about how
203quickly technology changes and when you think about the minds that are behind the designs that we do that just because it is technical in nature it does not mean that there's not some creativity and artistry that goes into the delivery of that particular concept of technology and so i completely support what you're saying as to how we need to move forward with regard to the artistry of what we do in education because it is the blending of technology and the technical and theoretical components with the creativity so thank you very much any additional comments questions ready i have one very quickly i'm starting already very quick um i'm just wondering if we know for sure if there will be an albany high musical yeah in the 22-23 school year yes we are i love the
204one word answers one word answers are so great thank you we are definitely working toward that and we are very um we're on a positive trend thinking that yes this will happen very good all right little set oh there's one more thing i i didn't want to add um and i'm just just because i've been thinking since ann savage had mentioned about middle school instrumental and i was amiss to say that there was recruitment done at hackett in the spring and there's about 20 new additional students that were in the school that were interested in taking on an instrument that didn't have an opportunity that are now enrolled officially and um was able to move some ftes around to support the time so that those students can be part of the ensemble so i i
205apologize for missing that just with everything tonight so yeah there is there is work doing happening and our teachers um have time in the middle schools to be able to support getting kids in there and i think that is part of their normal process anyway but i think especially right now that's going to be that's a higher priority we want we want our pit programs built and back great miss right thank you so much respect all thank you thank you okay that concludes our discussions for this evening we narrow on to board committee reports and do we have it yes ma'am i have two brief updates on government relations one um the resolutions committee met i don't think i've reported on that right yet i think i just did but email resolutions committee met and
206um pretty much that this is the new york state school boards association resolutions committee and they met um i i'm serving my last year on that we met we did go through the resolutions that i shared with all and the annual business meeting is coming up in october but it looked it was actually very reassuring i know i indicated to several of you that you should look at some of the resolutions which came from a a different perspective than we have here in the city school district of albany around what kinds of curricular choices school districts should have um and i was reassured by the um the committee versus some of the proposals so so things were look i think the recommendations of the committee are consistent with the will of this board and then
207brief second i was had the opportunity through nisba to meet with congressman tonko yesterday we talked primarily around about title 1 idea and school funding for meals those were the three hot topics at the federal level that we talked about and it was me and about probably four other school board members from around the state meeting with the congressman so that was also very effective very good mrs christie do you have a report nope i'm looking for i'm looking forward to meeting with our new superintendent assistant superintendent uh as part of the audit committee next month but the audit committee has not met since our last meeting very good and uh policy nothing there maybe but september yes okay so that leaves facilities and uh we are always meeting um we have lots going on
208in our committee and mr charis we're going to be looking forward to working with you uh in that area um we have our next meeting is september 20th so uh we will do that in person again here at hg and let's see i think that's all the committing points is that correct right pardon me uh other business items only one that i did want to raise um we have the i've been working with um folks to work on the uh team operations manual for the board and we're taking a little different approach so we can maybe move that along faster so um our vice president and savage will take uh sort of lead that initiative and so we as officers will be meeting or the ad hoc community will be meeting on that shortly but
209i thought it was um tonight it was mentioned the visit stewie is on school board liaison will um i think you know we're all looking to redefine that and so you're going to see that coming out a bit and and i think again it's going to be very helpful in our redefinition because if we're going to visit schools with a very different lens um a whole nother approach um but we're going to have to ask ourselves about time we're going to have to make some time to see some of those things in action during the day it's not always easy to yeah we can attend a fair an art show or something like that but it's a whole nother experience really seeing that work of our students and our teachers in the classroom so really
210going to ask all of you as we begin to redefine this to also clog out some time so that you can actually visit observe and and experience what's happening in the schools and interact with our young people um they want to share what they're doing um and so i think it's really consistent with our conversation here tonight that that's what we want and we want to be a part of that engagement and taking in the voices of our students and their teachers as well so just a little item i wanted to mention um excuse me and the other thing as you can see on our item here coming up the superintendent did mention this already september 8 6 pm community partners recognition reception at ash albany school of humanities i'm looking very much forward to
211that we have some tremendous partners out in our community and doing a great job with us and in collaboration with us so thank you anything else for the good of the order is creature i'd like to make a motion to return to executive session it's crazy uh yes that second is can i just mention that motion can i just make a motion can i suggest an amendment which is to return to executive session for the purposes of discussing uh individual matters having to do with the personnel issue okay thanks so much okay so emotionally yes amended and made by ms craichie seconded by dr chatur all in favor and i is yes all right that's unanimous um we are now adjourned returning to executive session thank you all and good night